08-08-2025
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
California winery embroiled in fraud scandal has a new owner
A winery that was embroiled in a high-profile Sonoma County fraud scandal has been acquired by a prominent California wine industry executive.
Sojourn Cellars was once part of the portfolio of embattled real estate developer Kenneth Mattson, who was arrested in May on charges including wire fraud and money laundering. The Sonoma winery, which had a reputation for high-quality Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon, became a victim of Mattson's fallout. In May, a bankruptcy court judge approved the sale of over 150 assets affiliated with Mattson and his partners.
Now, Pat Roney, the former CEO of Vintage Wine Estates, has purchased Sojourn with a small investment group. The deal includes Sojourn's brand and inventory, but no winery or vineyards. Roney did not disclose a purchase price.
There are two main reasons why Roney wanted to buy the 10,000-case Sojourn. First, 'I don't do well at retirement,' he said. Second, 'it's a great winery,' and almost 90% of its sales are direct to consumer, 'which is where the trend is going for smaller wineries.'
Roney co-founded Vintage Wine Estates after he and the late wine mogul Leslie Rudd purchased Windsor Vineyards in 2007, adding it to Napa Valley's Girard Vineyards, which they had jointly acquired in 2000. In the following years, Roney grew Vintage into one of California's most powerful wine conglomerates, buying 28 additional wineries including B.R. Cohn, Kunde, Cameron Hughes and Layer Cake. Roney stepped down as CEO in 2023, transitioning to board president.
Vintage filed for bankruptcy last summer, instantly becoming the most visible sign that California's wine industry was facing a major crisis, and preceding a barrage of other winery closures or sales.
When Vintage's assets became available in a bankruptcy auction, Roney and Vintage investor John Sebastiani put in a bid for three of the company's most popular Sonoma wineries, Kunde, B.R. Cohn and Viansa. But they lost the bid to automotive billionaire Jay Adair, who paid $85 million for those properties, as well as Napa Valley's Clos Pegase and Girard.
Roney didn't walk away empty handed, however. He managed to buy Windsor Vineyards, the winery that had launched Vintage Wine Estates in the first place, in October from Full Glass Marketing, which had bought it from Vintage out of bankruptcy. In the months since, Roney said he's made changes to Windsor Vineyards including updating the website and 'improving the quality of the wines.'
The big draw for Sojourn, he said, is its well trafficked tasting room by the downtown Sonoma plaza. Given the precariousness of the wholesale market for wine right now — behemoth distributor Republic National Distributing Co. is pulling out of California entirely — it's more important than ever for wineries to build up their direct-to-consumer businesses, Roney said.
As part of the acquisition, Roney has laid 'a couple of people' off, he said, but most of the staff remains in place, including longtime winemaker Erich Bradley. A renovation of the tasting room is in the works (it will remain open during renovations), and Roney has plans for a packaging makeover. 'They went through a controversial label change,' he said. 'We're going to bring it back closer to what it was before.'
