Shaw Capital Working Management Tips & Articles: Bay Area’s Bacchus Capital Management gets back into wine investing game

http://shaw-capitalworkingmanagement.com/2011/03/10/shaw-capital-working-management-tips-bay-areas-bacchus-capital-management-gets-back-into-wine-investing-game/

MAR10
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http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2011/03/09/sfs-bacchus-capital-management-gets.html





San Francisco Business Times – by Chris Rauber

Date: Wednesday, March 9, 2011, 4:12pm PST
The Bay Area’s Bacchus Capital Management LLC, an investment and advisory firm specializing in the wine business, says it will provide an unspecified amount of growth capital to Qupé, a Central Coast wine producer.

“Working with the team at Bacchus will provide us with the working capital we need to expand our inventory, our production and our distribution so that we can continue our growth and build on our momentum,” Qupé’s founder, owner and winemaker Bob Lindquist said in the March 8 statement.

Peter Kaufman, a Bacchus principal, told the San Francisco Business Times that Qupé produces about 35,000 cases a year and wants to expand up to 70,000 cases, and “we want to help fund that growth.”

But no one will say anything about the size of the funding package. Kaufman said its range is up to $10 million.

Bacchus was launched in 2007 by co-founder and Managing Partner Sam Bronfman, former president of Seagram Chateau and Estate Wines, Kaufman and Henry Owsley, who are president and chief executive officer, respectively, at Gordian Group LLC, a New York-based investment bank.

Officials describe Bacchus as a San Francisco company, but its corporate office is actually located across the Bay and over the hills in Pleasanton.

Also, until this month, Bacchus hadn’t announced any deals or had much to say for itself since late 2008, when it provided financing to San Francisco’s Cameron Hughes Wine, until now the only investment deal mentioned on its website.

In any case, the two companies said this week that Qupé is at “a critical point in its brand and business evolution,” after three decades of producing Rhône varietals and Chardonnay. The fresh capital from Bacchus will enable the Los Olivos wine producer to expand inventory, production and distribution.





And stay tuned, says Kaufman, because “this is a paradigm for more things we’re looking to do.”

Read more: Bay Area’s Bacchus Capital Management gets back into wine investing game | San Francisco Business Times