Andrew Murray Buys Qupé Wine

Two of Santa Barbara’s most compelling syrah sagas dovetailed this week, as the pioneering brand Qupé Wines was acquired by onetime wunderkind, now veteran syrah superstar Andrew Murray Vineyards. In a confluence of lifelong passion, serendipitous connections, and last-minute hustle, Murray was able to craft a deal to buy Qupé out of bankruptcy from Vintage Wine Estates, the publicly traded conglomerate whose more than 60 brands are quickly being liquidated.

“We’re bringing it back home,” said Murray, who was inspired to start his own winery more than 30 years ago due in part to the syrahs crafted by Qupé founder Bob Lindquist. “I was in his shadow when we started,” explained Murray of Lindquist, who created Qupé in 1982. “I admired him for being so manically passionate, like I ultimately became, about Rhône varieties.”

Naming it after the Chumash word name for “poppy” (Qupé is pronounced “kyoo-pay”), Lindquist was the first in Santa Barbara — and one of the first in the entire United States — to bank a brand primarily on the Rhône grape syrah. (He also made plenty of chardonnay, which remains about 40 percent of production.) Murray did much the same when, at the age of 18 and with the help of his parents, he started his own vineyard in 1990, fired up first on viognier and then syrah.

The deal is the second recent Central Coast transaction emerging from Vintage’s bankruptcy. It comes on the heels of last week’s purchase of Arroyo Grande’s Laetitia Winery by longtime winemaker Eric Hickey and investors Ejnar Knudsen and Jeff Nicholson, who were both also involved with Vintage.

The specifics of winery transactions aren’t typically revealed. But due to rules of the bankruptcy proceedings that required certain bids to be made public, the North Bay Business Journal reported on September 24 that Qupé had been valued at $2.7 million, and that Murray would pay $500,000 for the brand.

Lindquist cheered the deal, believing that Murray could help restore Qupé to its former glory. “He wants to do it right,” said Lindquist, who explained that Vintage had “dumbed down” the label by eliminating some of the vineyard sources he’d developed. “They basically had turned Qupé into a $13.99 grocery-store brand.”

Currently focused on Lindquist Family Wines, he did not attempt to buy Qupé himself. “I’m now 71 years old, so doing something like that at my age just doesn’t make a lot of sense,” said Lindquist, noting that his facility — which he shares with Au Bon Climat and Hitching Post Wines on the Bien Nacido Vineyard — doesn’t have room for more wine.

He was also leery of enlisting investors needed to make such a deal, as his last experience in that regard didn’t go so well.  In 2013, he sold most of Qupé to Charles Banks, who’d later go to federal prison for wire fraud. That led to Vintage buying Qupé in 2018, when Lindquist was effectively cut loose from the brand he founded.

“The last thing I want is financial partners,” said Lindquist. “But if I was his age, I would have jumped at the chance.”

Over the phone on Monday, Murray, who is 52 years old, was forthcoming about the various twists and turns that led to this acquisition. He didn’t know much about Vintage when it bought Qupé six years ago. “I just knew it wasn’t the right group of people to do it,” he said. “It didn’t feel like the way the brand started. I just tuned it out.”

He started paying more attention when Vintage, which went public in 2021, started making headlines for losing money. Then, one year ago, he happened to be pouring wine alongside a Vintage table during a wine tasting in Park City, Utah, and he inquired about Qupé. The brand wasn’t for sale, but Murray checked again in April and in June, as Vintage’s woes became even more dire.

When the company declared bankruptcy in July, Murray felt it was a bit over his head.  “I was very intimidated by such a big bankruptcy,” said Murray, who, among other lessons, had to read up on the “stalking horse” bid process. “I thought it was a wine brand,” he laughed.

But personal connections beget more connections, and he suddenly was writing an “indication of intent” to bid on the brand, which got him access to the bankruptcy auction platform. “I was immediately discouraged. It was out of my price range,” said Murray. “Then I couldn’t sleep for two to three days after that.”

He called the bankers, told them his long story, and they kindly told him to put up or shut up. When Murray presented an amount he could actually afford, they said, “Let’s talk.”

“And then I freaked,” said Murray, who hadn’t even talked it all the way through with his wife yet.

Murray was able to get the price he wanted in part because he could quickly move the inventory from the cellars at Laetitia, where Vintage made Qupé. That includes bottled wines going quite a ways back as well as vintages in barrel that will be bottled soon, which Murray said tasted great.

Going forward, he plans to focus on the two larger bottlings of Central Coast syrah and the Y Block chardonnay, but may drill down into smaller Qupé bottlings in the future. He will stick to between 12,000 and 15,000 cases of Qupé distributed via wholesale channels, while slowly increasing his Andrew Murray Vineyards brand toward 20,000 cases, about 7,000 cases of which is sold directly to consumers through the tasting room and wine club.   

Murray has been quite philosophical about the deal since it closed last Wednesday, seeing it as the latest in a series of fortuitous, if slightly stressful, opportunities.

“There’s an overarching theme that, when presented with opportunity by the grace and generosity of family or friends or neighbors, we jumped on it,” he said of moving into an old warehouse on the Curtis Vineyard in 2005 and then taking over the entire Curtis Winery in 2014. “We closed our eyes and jumped, and it’s worked out wonderfully.”

He believes the Qupé acquisition provides greater opportunity for one or both of his twentysomething kids to take up a management role down the road, and sees this as part of building a better future for the region as a whole.

“I was always building for me and my family, but now I’m building for the people around me,” said Murray. “When I started, I was able to stand on the backs and coattails of giants, and I’m starting to realize that I’m becoming one of those giants that other people are standing on and benefiting from. That’s all I thought about through this whole process.”

See andrewmurrayvineyards.com.