Oasis Winery: Mondavi Saga Reruns In Virginia (now with more Shaq!)
Piece ran today in the Washington Post about Oasis Winery and the long-running efforts to sell it off to anyone who will shell out a couple of million for a winery in Fauquier County.
The Oasis Winery in Fauquier County, one of Virginia’s oldest, has been on the market since May 2007 and is now selling for $4.75 million. Such is the mystique of Oasis that basketball star Shaquille O’Neal, an apparent oenophile, and a group of investors were said to be on the verge of buying it last year.
Wait, what?
Shaquille O’Neal
Wow, check out Shaq expanding his interests to include wineries in Virginia. Nice job.
Aging shot-blockers aside, the article goes on to describe the trouble involved with selling Oasis winery. It boils down to a parent/son dispute over who gets what and for how much. The Son, 39 year old Tareq Salahi, wants to partner up with investors and purchase Oasis. The owners, Salahi’s parents, have filed a suit claiming that Salahi has interfered with prospective buyers.
We’ve all seen this movie before. It’s called The Mondavi Story and it was on Lifetime.
The interesting thing about wineries is that what is on the bottle is usually more important than what is in the bottle. Branding in the wine business is epic, and if your brand gains hold you can put tap water in your Chardonnay bottles and you’ll still sell out the vintage. This is why purchasers of wine empires, such as Constellation Brands when they purchased Mondavi, are more interested in the brand and the name than they are with the actual operations of the winery. Observe:
According to Tareq Salahi, O’Neal and his partners backed out of the deal with the elder Salahis after the investors learned they would not obtain the Oasis trademark or wine.
It’s sad to see family squabbles get in the way of life and prosperity, but the simple fact is that when there are millions of dollars at stake, someone is going to squabble over it. The American inheritance and estate laws, well-intentioned though they may be, also leave lots to squabble over.
