(Note: None of the Atlas vineyard holdings were affected by the recent wildfires, although a few of the company’s employees lost their homes.) They secured the farming contracts for many of PPV’s properties, and with investor partners bought 50 percent stakes in five vineyards, including Walala Vineyard in the northwest Sonoma Coast.

“We just figured we could offer jobs to all the employees if we could branch out on our own,” Cybulski says. Belli and Cybulski formed Atlas Vineyard Management in 2013 when the company they’d previously worked for ( Premier Pacific Vineyards, a major vineyard-investment outlet funding the California Public Employees’ Retirement System) was dissolving, and preparing for layoffs. Remy’s partners - Barry Belli, a former Frito-Lay executive, and Mike Cybulski, a veteran viticulturist - are shrewd businessmen. And even more improbably, the vineyard management side specializes in precisely the sort of grapes that the wine side seeks to avoid: expensive ones. is the rare wine brand born of a vineyard management business, also called Atlas. John Storey/Special to the ChronicleĪtlas Wine Co. “I want to be the bridge between high-end wine and the worst wine in the market,” Remy says. For a brand to get on the shelf at Safeway, it’s got to be big. Just three companies - Gallo, Constellation and the Wine Group - are responsible for more than half of all wine sold in the U.S. As of this year, 30 companies, out of more than 9,000, control over 90 percent of all domestic wine sold by volume, according to Wine Business Monthly. Within that arena, Remy hopes to position Atlas brands as a bastion of independence within an ever-conglomerating industry.

The goal is not to compete with artisanal darlings like Matthiasson and Scribe the goal is to compete with grocery-shelf hits like The Prisoner and Kendall-Jackson. The Atlas wines stand as a meaningfully better alternative than other California wines of equivalent price. But it’s not what people want.”Īnti-elitist bents can feel tired - “give the people what they want” easily becomes an excuse for making a bad product - but Remy makes a persuasive case. “Would I love to make Valdiguié? Cornas-style Syrah? Sancerre-like Sauvignon Blanc?” Remy says. That’s important, Remy insists, if you want to reach a mass audience. Though Atlas wines carry no residual sugar, they taste fruity, ripe and rich.

The atlas of wine