Mr. Jim DeBonis This is Me

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1. 1. www.northbaybusinessjournal.com

   www.northbaybusinessjournal.co - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/30/2008   Last Visited: 7/10/2008

   WINE INDUSTRY BUSINESS JOURNAL: Wine Industry Executive Profile: Jim DeBonisWine Industry Executive Profile: Jim DeBonis
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   Wine Industry Executive Profile: Jim DeBonis
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   Jim Debonis
   
   CEO, Ascentia Wine Estates
   
   375 Healdsburg Ave., Second Floor, Healdsburg 95448; 707-433-8268; www.ascentiawineestates.com
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   Favorite wine pioneer: Zelma Long was winemaker for Simi Winery when Jim DeBonis came into the industry.
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   HEALDSBURG - Jim DeBonis is driven to make a difference in his work and succeed at the same time.
   
   That's partly why he assembled $234 million in private equity to acquire brands he helped build, rebuild or acquire over the past five years and launch Ascentia Wine Estates earlier this month as one of the North Coast's largest wine companies.
   
   As chief operating officer for wine divisions of public companies, he had seen the name on the front door of his Healdsburg office change twice, and it was set to change again when he set out late last year to get backers to buy the brands.
   
   It was Allied Domecq Wines USA when he arrived in 2002 to oversee brands such as Clos du Bois in Sonoma County's Alexander Valley, Buena Vista in Carneros and Atlas Peak in Sonoma.
   
   Then in mid-2005, it became Beam Wine Estates when Illinois-based Fortune Brands acquired the Allied Domecq wines and brought in its own brands, including Geyser Peak in Alexander Valley and Wild Horse on the Central Coast.
   
   Between and after those deals, Mr. DeBonis talked Gary Farrell into selling his high-end Russian River Valley winery, brought in old-vine zinfandel brand XYZin, helped differentiate Geyser Peak from Clos du Bois, refocused Buena Vista on its estate vineyards and concentrated Atlas Peak on Napa Valley mountain appellation grapes.
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   Just after the deal, Mr. DeBonis, 48, brought in KeyBank to look for backers for acquiring the Beam brands and found San Francisco private-equity firm GESD Capital Partners and New Jersey-based W.J. Deutsch & Sons, the marketing and distribution brains behind the U.S. success of the Australian brand Yellow Tail.
   
   Constellation kept Clos du Bois and Wild Horse but sold Ascentia the Sonoma County brands plus Columbia and Covey Run in Washington and Ste. Chapelle in Idaho.
   
   Unlike other brands he's worked with in his 20-year wine career, the Ascentia portfolio has little brand overlap and is diversified in regional sourcing and bottle pricing to meet trends such as popularity of riesling wine, which is dominant in the Pacific Northwest, and consumer anxiety over the economy.
   
   In a separate deal, Ascentia leased more than 600 acres of vines connected to the brands from St. Helena's VinREIT."You sure paid a lot of money to get your old office back," he recalled a staffer at one of the Beam wineries quipping just after the deal.
   
   Indeed, much is remaining the same.Mr. DeBonis is back in Beam Wine Estates' 15,000-square-foot office in Healdsburg with a head office staff of 20.
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   Mr. DeBonis is applying lessons learned in his time with Allied Domecq and Beam about the best of centralized and decentralized management.Purchasing and finance can benefit from centralization, but he avoids homogenization of brands by too tightly controlling local decisions of each winery.
   
   "A winery without a sense of place is just a commodity," he said.
   
   Mr. DeBonis started out with dreams of hitting it big in high tech. Armed with an associate of science degree in technology, the Healdsburg native went to work in the late 1970s at the now-shuttered Fairchild Semiconductor plant there.He moved on to a few startup technology companies in Santa Rosa and finally ended up at Material Progress Corp., which became Komag Materials Technology.
   
   As he entered management, he realized that he was good at managing technology but needed to hone his people skills.
   
   After eight years in the industry, he'd had enough of the business cycles, especially after having to scale his production crew at Material Progress from 50 employees to 400 and back to 50 within six months to fulfill large orders.
   
   Mr. DeBonis grew up with a 50-acre vineyard on his parents' Russian River Valley ranch and enjoyed wine, so he decided to get into the business.In 1987, he saw an advertisement for a cellarmaster at Simi Winery in Healdsburg, but he had no idea what the job entailed.
   
   At the interview, he had to convince winemaker Zelma Long that aptitude in managing high-tech manufacturing would work in her cellar.Mr. DeBonis won over Ms. Long, who was expanding and reviving Simi at the time.
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   Four years later, Mr. DeBonis was vice president of production at Simi, which was owned along with Domaine Chandon by France-based LVMH.By 1997, he was general manager of Simi, senior vice president of operations at Domaine Chandon and started traveling around the world to oversee facilities for Domaine Chandon Estates.
   
   "One day I came home from a trip, and my daughter said if I was promoted any more I'd be promoted out of the family," he recalled.
   
   As he was looking to make a career change, Canandaigua Wine Co. - the former name of Constellation - was eyeing Simi for acquisition.And Bill Newlands, who had been on the executive team at Domaine Chandon and would be at the helm of Beam Wine Estates, joined the company and was trying to persuade Mr. DeBonis to do likewise.
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   In an example of the small world of North Coast wine, Mr. DeBonis ended up working for both organizations as Canadaigua acquired Franciscan in 1999 as its fine wine group, now called Icon Estates.Three years later, Mr. Newlands left Franciscan Estates for Allied Domecq USA, a Healdsburg-based group of wineries, and convinced Mr. DeBonis to join him as COO.

2. 2. winesandvines.com

   winesandvines.com/template.cfm - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/10/2008   Last Visited: 6/11/2008

   Ascentia Wine Estates was created by Jim DeBonis, the former COO of Beam Wine Estates, who helped manage and position the brands after Beam acquired them from Allied Domecq.
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   CEO DeBonis sees "pretty strong growth" for Geyser Peak, Columbia and Covey Run, with "measured" growth for Buena Vista.He doesn't plan to significantly grow the Gary Farrell super-luxury portfolio.
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   The large Atlas Peak Vineyard that formerly provided the fruit and the winery site reverts to owner Piero Antinori of Italy in the fall, but the Atlas Peak brand can continue with other sources of grapes, said CEO DeBonis.
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   Under DeBonis at Beam, the winery had slashed production 80%, abandoning an inexpensive line of wines sourced from Bronco; and Lake County Sauvignon Blanc, to concentrate on high-end Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
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   Like the Deutsches, DeBonis is very high on Riesling."We tried to launch Clos du Bois into Riesling, and did it successfully, but there's just not much Riesling being grown in California," he lamented.

3. 3. seattletimes.nwsource.com

   seattletimes.nwsource.com/html - [Cached]

   Published on: 6/11/2008   Last Visited: 6/12/2008

   Although Columbia Winery in Woodinville has been sold to a California company, its wine-tasting room will remain open at least through year's end, said Jim DeBonis, head of the new company.
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   Although Columbia Winery in Woodinville has been sold to a California company, its wine-tasting room will remain open at least through year's end, said Jim DeBonis, head of the new company.
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   Columbia's tasting room, on a month-to-month lease, will remain open in Woodinville at least through year's end, said Jim DeBonis, chief executive of Ascentia.
   
   He also said he doesn't anticipate any significant changes to Columbia's winemaking or wine lineup.
   
   "I plan on working with the team up here," said DeBonis, who most recently was chief operating officer at Beam Wine Estates and previously managed Constellation's Icon Estates."It's the folks working with the vineyards that provide a recipe for success."
   
   DeBonis explained that the deal had been in the works at least since January.He said a complicated series of wine-industry acquisitions led up to his decision to go after the eight brands that now comprise Ascentia's portfolio.
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   I would have to figure out a way to make an acquisition of my own," DeBonis explained.
   
   DeBonis partnered with William and Peter Deutsch of wine importer W.J. Deutsch & Sons and GESD Capital Partners, a Bay Area private-equity food and beverage firm, to put the financing together.
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   Ascentia, DeBonis insisted, will change all that.