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There was a lot of consternation a few years back when the conglomerate Vintage Wine Estates gobbled up two iconic Central Coast brands. The general wine-loving public tends to react angrily whenever a bigger company buys a small one, and there are plenty of obvious reasons for that, even if not all of them are always true. But we also can rejoice when the tides turn and the little guy wins, which is what just happened in both of these cases.
The first of these acquisitions was syrah pioneer Qupé Winery , which Vintage bought in 2018 when the brand’s main investor Charles Banks went to federal prison for wire fraud. (Banks is now out of prison, but it’s unclear what he’s up to. His daughter, however, owns two wineries up in Oregon .)