News broke several weeks ago that Gary Heck, owner of Korbel, was selling off his Kenwood Vineyards property to Banfi, a NY-based wine conglomerate. (My original post on the sale).
At the time it was unknown how they would separate Kenwood from his other holdings under the Heck Estates umbrella (Valley of the Moon and Lake Sonoma Wineries) as they are all pretty well intertwined. Well, they may not be able to divide things.
It appears now that Banfi may buy all three operations--or at least Valley of the Moon. Lake Sonoma is really only a label now, not a "real" winery, so will it just disappear? It looks like Gary Heck may soon be down to his sizable Korbel Champagne Cellars holding. Gary is getting near retirement age, as is much of his upper-management, so this may be his reason.
The bad news in this would be the duplicate positions that will not be needed in Sonoma County. This will be mostly in the Heck Estates admin office that runs the wineries' businesses.
How do you know this? I work at Heck Estates and we haven't been told this. But maybe we will be the last to know.
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