Korbel buys back Kenwood Vineyards for US$4 million
An announcement on 27 March that Sonoma’s Kenwood Vineyards had “closed until further notice” led to speculation that it would open under new ownership. Now that new owner has been revealed as previous proprietor Korbel & Bros. db reports.
On 23 March, just days before Kenwood Vineyards abruptly announced it was closing its doors “until further notice”, the winery’s owner Pernod Ricard Kenwood Holding LLC, filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining notification with the California Employment Development Department. The move suggested there was more to the story than a simple cut-and-dry winery closure.
While the notification filed by Pernod Ricard confirmed that it would permanently close the Kenwood Vineyards business by 31 March and make all 14 employees redundant by that date, commentators surmised that there would be no need to retrain staff if the operation were not to re-open in some guise later down the line.
New owner
According to public records viewed by North Bay Business Journal, Kenwood Vineyards was sold to Korbel & Bros., the producer of Korbel California Champagne and Brandy, for US$4m on Thursday 26 March (the day before the winery shuttered its tasting room).
Korbel originally sold the 13ha Kenwood Vineyards to Pernod Ricard in May 2014 for close to US$100 million, after a former sale to Banfi Wines fell through in 2012.
When Pernod Ricard picked up Kenwood Vineyards it marked the company’s last wine acquisition before it decided to switch its focus to spirits, and the French company continues to offload its wine assets, as shown by its December 2025 sale of sparkling producer Mumm Napa to Trinchero Family Wine & Spirits.
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Storied history
Korbel & Bros., Inc has a long and tangled relationship with Kenwood spanning 30 years. It initially acquired a 50% stake in Kenwood Vineyards in 1996, snapping up the remaining 50% from the winery’s founders, John Sheela, Mike Lee and Marty Lee in 1999. At the time Kenwood was known for producing Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon, though it later branched out to grow Pinot Noir, Merlot, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, and Pinot Gris.
When Korbel decided to sell up to Pernod Ricard in 2014, company owner Gary Heck said it was to allow him to focus all his attention on sparkling wine, a category that was on the rise in California at the time. “Kenwood produces more than 550,000 cases of wine a year. It takes a lot of work and effort. It’s very profitable, but sparkling wine [consumption] is now at an all-time high [in America], so we want to put all our executive effort and focus on it,” he said.
Korbel had been producing sparkling wine, using the méthode champenoise process, since 1882, so fizz wine has always been a core part of its DNA. According to a report by the Los Angeles Times, Korbel made America’s first ever commercial sparkling wine, with its inaugural shipment dispatched in 1882 from Korbel Depot, about 70 miles from San Francisco via the North Western Pacific Railroad’s long-gone Russian River spur.
It is not known at this point whether Korbel has re-acquired Kenwood Vineyards with the aim of producing still wines, or using its grapes in its sparkling offerings. Kenwood is a major producer of Sonoma County Chardonnay.
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