22 to watch in 2022: Vintage Wine Estates founder Pat Roney
Name: Pat Roney
Title or position: Chief executive officer of Vintage Wine Estates, a mid-tier wine company with its main headquarters in Santa Rosa
On the job since: 2007
Age: 65
Hometown: Grew up in Los Altos, moved to Sonoma County in 1986 and splits time between Santa Rosa and Incline Village, Nevada.
Why Roney is someone to watch:
Since cofounding the company with the late vintner Leslie Rudd, the low-key Roney has methodically grown Vintage Wine Estates through shrewd acquisitions akin to a baseball general manager picking up undervalued players and turning the organization into a championship contender. The company’s first significant deal was when it bought Windsor Vineyards, which allowed it to expand into direct-to-consumer sales from the winery’s telemarketing network. It picked up B.R. Cohn Winery in Glen Ellen in a forced bank sale in 2015 and this year fully acquired Kunde Family Winery in Kenwood, where Roney served as president in the early 1990s. It became a publicly traded company this June in its quest get more than $1 billion to fuel more acquisitions, which it did in November when it bought the Sebastopol-based producer of Ace Ciders.
What others are saying about Roney:
“Pat is a man of integrity and has always had a singular focus in whatever he does. Pat’s focus is now on building Vintage Wine Estates into a leader in the US wine business. With Pat’s plans for more acquisitions and continued growth at Vintage Wine Estates in 2022 and beyond I am confident that we will see the company grow into one of the U.S.’s most successful wine business.” — Robert Nicholson, founder and principal of International Wine Associates, a Healdsburg-based boutique mergers and acquisition advisory firm
What Roney says about 2022:
“I think at least probably the next six months and maybe to a year the supply chain is going to continue to be a challenge in terms of getting materials, trucking and logistics. That's going to challenge the shipments out and it's going to it's going to drive pricing up. I wouldn't be surprised if we actually see the industry start to take prices up next year. Historically, the industry doesn't do a lot of that. I do think there is continued opportunity for consolidation and continued opportunity for growth. I think that while there will be challenges in the industry, I think there's still a lot of upside in the wine industry.”