Who You Calling Cheap? Fred Franzia—Mr. Two Buck Chuck—in one of his many vineyards
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California winemaW
Fred Franzia says tiie worid wouid
be better off without aii that
expensive Napa Vaiiey wine.
And that's not just an opinionit's a business pian
BYKERMITPAHISON
Photographs by Gabriela Hasbun
FRED FRANZIA
ell him to get f—ed."
Fred T. Franzia is dictating a message for his advertising consultant. Franzia> the chairman and CEO of Bronco Wine, is sitting in his office in the San Joaquin Valley of California. His
farnily business is one of the largest wine companies in the United States, yet his headquarters is about as luxurious as a trailer at
a construction site. It s a small, termite-ridden building beside a
fence topped with barbed wire. Behind him are shelves lined
with dozens of his wines, maiy costing less per bottle than a sixpack of beer. The bottles clink when the air conditioning kicks
on. Trucks rumble through tlie gate by the guard shack outside
the window. A gun safe gathers dust in the comer. He can't keep weapons anymore
because he's a convicted felon.
Franzia, 62, is a jowly winemaker with a barrel torso and little patience for critics.
After six years, he has just come out on the losing end of a high-profile legal battle
against vintners in Napa Valley over whether he can put Napa labels on bottles of wine
made with cheaper grapes grown elsewhere. Franzia dismisses the Napa vintners as "a
bunch of whiners." He believes that the wine industry has become intoxicated by elitism, inflated prices, and its own PR about terroir—the idea that a wine is uniquely
a product of the place it comes from, and by extension that some
places are better than others. "Why complicate it?" asks Franzia,
voice rising. "Does anybody complicate Cheerios by saying the
wheat has to be grown on the side of a mountain and the terroir
in North Dakota is better than Kansas and all this horse s—? You
put something in your mouth and enjoy it. If you spend $100 to buy
a bottle of wine, how the hell are you going to enjoy it? Its a joke.
There's no wine worth that kind of money."
It's not just Napatistas who rile him into bursts of profanity.
There are the retailers with their excessive markups ("greedy bastards"), restaurants with their overpriced wine lists ("they rape the
consumer"), and his paragons of oenophile elitism: the famous
wine critic Robert Parker and Wine Spectator magazine ("their expertise is talking about themselves and saying they're the experts").
And don't get him started on corkage fees. Still, the Napa vintners
do occupy a special place in his spleen. "Ihis is what pisses off your
friends in Napa," he says, and shows his latest salvo: a newspaper
112 I INC. MAGAZINE
MAY 2006
advertisement that reads, "Think you have to spend $20 for a Napa
Valley Merlot? Think again!"
Soon his secretary appears at his side and slips him a note. It's a
memo from his advertising guy, recommending that Franzia not
share the ads before they're ready for publication. Franzia abruptly
hands it back to his assistant and renders his executive decision:
"Tell him to get f—ed."
He chuckles and shakes his head. "Like he's going to tell me what
I'm going to share with people?"
Not surprisingly, many Napa vintners view Franzia as the barbarian at the gate. Last summer, at the annual dinner of Napa grape
growers, the assembled chanted "Kick Bronco's butt! Kick Bronco's
butt!" Throughout his career Franzia has defied conventional wisdom, industry trends, and occasionally the law. In 1994 he pled
guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to defraud and paid a halfmiltion-dollar fine. In 2000 he inspired a change in state law regarding the labeling of wines. Then came the six-year fight over that law.
$400 million worth. His masterstroke is the
cheapest of his dozens of wines—the famous Two Buck Chuck, the fastest-growing
label in the history of the industry.
"He's the kind of person—there's one in
every industry—who loves to go against the
grain and make money at it," says Robert H.
Smiley, director of Wine Programs at the
Graduate School of Management at the
University of California, Davis. "He's a very
good businessman, there's no doubt. The
legal issues I'll leave aside."
Franzia's mission is to make wine so affordable and plentiful that every American
can put a decent bottle on the dinner table.
He drives down prices by running an efficient operation that takes advantage of
economies of scale—Bronco owns nearly
three quarters as much vineyard acreage as
all of Napa Valley combined—and by swallowing up competitors that fall on hard
times. Now, as U.S. wine consumption
reaches new high after new high and the
domestic wine industry hits the $27 billion
mark. Bronco is flexing more muscle than
ever. And that is making Franzia the bete
noire of some parts of wine country.
IT'S A CLEAR WINTER morning as Franzia
slowly prowls the grounds of his vast winemaking plant in Ceres, California, behind the
wheel of his Jeep Cherokee. Ceres lies 100
miles south of Napa in the San Joaquin Valley, part of the larger Central Valley, an area
once derided as the "jug wine capital of the
world"—don't get Franzia started on that bit
Screw the Pretense Bronco Wine is a frankiy industrial operation. Each of these
of terroir snobbery This fertile plain,
tanks holds 700,000 gallons of wine—about 3.5 million bottles' worth.
once the floor of an ancient sea, is the
center of his wine empire, and outside his windshield looms the citadel:
his massive production, fermentation, and storage facility, with more
than 400 tanks that collectively hold
80 million gallons of wine. Franzia
constantly makes rounds of his production facilities and vineyards to
keep a hand in the minutia of his
business. His car is well known to his
employees as a roiling second office,
and the chances are good that if he
"Mr. Franzia is what 1 would call an unscrupulous renegade who isn't at this Bronco property, he's at another one. He's twice divorced
not only loves to find an edge but is pretty ruthless in doing so," says and by his count works 100 hours a week. "I don't socialize anyVic Motto, a Napa Valley consultant. "He not only likes to make a where," he says. "There's no money made in socializing."
buck, but it's even better for him if he can make it at your expense.
Yet Franzia can be charming and extremely funny in his own
It just adds another element of pleasure for him."
idiosyncratic way, and theres often a bit of gamesmanship behind
Franzia is the most controversial figure in the U.S. wine indus- his bluster. His profanity isn't necessarily an expression of anger;
try and also one of the most savvy. By moving in exactly the op- often it's just an indication that his vital signs are okay. "We often
posite direction of the industry elite, he has built Bronco into the joke in-house that if Fred stops abusing you, you've probably lost
fourth largest wine company in the United States in case sales: Last some ground," Bob Stashak, a Bronco winemaker and plant manyear Bronco sold 20 million cases, or 240 million bottles, of wine. ager, says with a laugh. The private man, according to close friends.
"He not only likes to make a buck, but
it's even better for him if he can make it
at your expense," says one Napa
consultant. "It just adds another
element of pleasure for him.
MAY 2006
INC. MAGAZINE 113
is somewhat at odds with the public image. "When you start talking
about family things, he's very, very tender," says Don Sebastiani, a
California winemaker who has known Franzia much of his life.
"There's a very, very soft underbelly."
Many other winemakers cultivate their public image as much as
their vines. They build architectural wineries, retain publicists,
spend face time with customers, and tell romantic stories about
their wines. Franzia has followed a different formula: Deliver value,
reinvest in the business, and screw the pretense.
The proof lies outside his windshield. His production facilities
are an industrial behemoth. Franzia slowly drives through the
complex and points out huge lots where hundreds of trucks line up
during harvest, crush pits that can process 16 truckloads of grapes
per hour, tank presses, enormous decanter centrifuges. He brakes
and points at one tank that holds the equivalent of 3,500 wine
bottles per vertical inch. It's 42 feet high and holds only half as
much as the 700,000-gallon tanks farther down. There are 414 such
huge containers of various sizes; the place looks like a tank farm,
"We built this from literally nothing to where it is today in less
than 30 years," Franzia says. "Sometimes even I think it's been
pretty rapid."
He drives into a cavernous warehouse, clicks a remote control
inside his car, and opens automatic doors to reveal storerooms
stacked with wine cases and thousands of oak barrels.
"You been through some wineries in Napa, haven't you?" he
asks, "You seen any with that many barrels in one place?"
Bronco owns 50 square miles of vineyards and adds three to six
square miles every year. Ihe company grows vines, crushes grapes,
bottles wine, and runs its own distribution operation, Classic Wines
of California. It buys and sells bulk wine. It operates storage and
production facilities in the towns of Ceres, Napa, Sonoma, Escalon,
and Madera, It bottles about 30 of its own labels, including Charles
Shaw, Crane Lake, Forest Glen, and Forestville, plus wines for other companies under contract.
Bronco's wines are associated more with
the brands, or labels, than with the place the
grapes were grown, (Franzia talks of a new
label named Harlow Ridge, after a street on
an industrial development where Bronco's
bottling plant is located—how's that for terroir?) The company's 17 winemakers pick
from wines coming through the inventory to
enhance blends for a particular label. They
might mix a bit of Shiraz with Merlot, for
example, or wines aged in oak barrels with
those aged in steel tanks. There's nothing unusual in this, but it's
bold to insist that these blended wines are every bit as good as
Napa wines that cost several times as much, which of course
Franzia does. "I defy anyone that charges more money to let me
conduct a blind tasting," he says. "He'll look like a fool with his
own wine."
Franzia says a lot of things, but nothing from his repertoire
causes as much eye rolling within the industry as his claim that
no bottle of wine is worth more than $10. "I'm not sure that his
sense of taste is that refined," says Vic Motto. "If he disdains things
that cost more or are of higher quality, he may not understand
what the differences are. He does not seem to be a nuanced type
of person."
In fact. Bronco does sell a few wines for more than $10. Franzia
says he doesn't like those prices either, but he claims his hands are
tied by the cost of wines from premium appellations such as Napa
and Sonoma. And he'll apparently break the two-figure barrier
when buying wine for himself "He will publicly say he won't pay
over $10, but he's paid a lot of money for some of my wines in the
past," says Michael Mondavi, scion ofthe famous wine family and
a lifelong friend of Franzia's. "He did it because he liked them,"
Four Buck Fred Franzia's ultravalue office and wines
Questions for
Fred Franzia
10
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MAY 2006
1. What's your favorite part of a typical day?
Cetting here in the morning and seeing what exciting news I
have waiting for me in e-mails or projects ready to take off
on. Whatever the emergency ofthe day is.
2. What's the least glamorous thing you do regularly
in the line of duty?
Exit-interviewing employees.
3. What skill would you most like to improve?
Talking to reporters.
4. What makes for a good salesperson of your product?
Number one is, can they get the order and collect the money?
Number two is product knowledge and the ability to talk
about it in terms that translate to normal people. People
have a tendency to create too much mystery around wine.
FRED FRANZIA
BORN in 1943 to One of the most prominent witie
families in California. His grandfather, Giuseppe Franzia, emigrated to the United States from Genoa, Italy, in 1893 and began
commercial wine production in the San Joaquin Valley by 1915.
His five sons continued the business after the end of Prohibition
and built a winery in Ripon. Fred spent summers and holidays
stacking cases and pruning vineyards alongside
his brother Joseph and cousin John. He grew up
L UUHJBJI
around the founding fathers of Calitbrnia wine,
including his uncle Ernest Gallo, Julio Gallo,
Robert and Peter Mondavi, and August Sebastiani, and he considers these men his models.
terward because I thought he made a mistake."
Fred, Joseph, and John struck off on their own. Bronco incorporated on December 27,1973. Fred serves as chairman and CEO, Joseph is co-president and runs the company's distribution arm, and
John, also a co-president, oversees production. A dozen members of
Fred's family now work for Bronco, including two of hisfivechildren
(his other children are a doctor, an actress, and a Navy SEAL).
Franzia says he later reconciled with his father, but some friends
believe the loss of the original family business stoked his ambition.
"Let's face it, Fred's a driven man," says Marc Mondavi, president of
Charles Krug Winery in Napa Valley. "I'm sure that had some influence on the three of them—were going to start over and, by God,
The admiration ran hoth ways. Don Sebastiani we're going to show everybody we can do it."
recalls how his father, August Sebastiani, enjoyed
They did. And they collided with the law. In 1993, Franzia and
sparring with the young Franzia. "My father was Bronco were indicted on federal charges of conspiracy to defraud for
stunned by Fred," he says. "The guy was bom with misrepresenting cheap grapes worth $ 100 to $200 per ton as Zinfanamazing business acumen and personality. Fred del and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes worth five to 10 times as much.
would offer advice to my father almost like an The indictment charged that Fred Franzia himself instructed others
older man would to a younger one."
to sprinkle Zinfandel leaves on top of loads of cheaper grapes in what
Franzia went to work for the family compa- he called "the blessing of the loads"—a parody of the traditional
ny, assuming that one day his generation would blessing of the harvest. AU told, prosecutors said. Bronco misrepretake its turn at the helm. Then came a painful sented 5,000 tons of grapes and one million gallons of wine that were
blow. In 1973, Fred's father and uncles sold the sold on the wholesale market for $5 million.
family winery to Coca Cola Bottling. (Coca
The company pleaded no contest and paid a $2.5 million fine.
Cola later sold the business to the Wine Group, Eranzia pleaded guilty and agreed to pay a $500,000 fine. As part
a San Francisco company, which continues to of the plea agreement, Franzia stepped down from the board of
sell Franzia wine as a bag in a hox. The Franzia directors and as president and refrained from any involvement in
family has no connection with its namesake grape purchasing or production for five years. The prosecutor
wine.) "I just didn't feel selling was the right agreed to a downward departure in sentencing and no prison
thing to do and I told my dad," Franzia says. "I time, saying that Eranzia's absence might have resulted in the cloended up not talking to him for seven years af- sure or sale of the company and would have unfairly punished his
partners and hundreds of employees. "The safest guy to do business with is me because I have the most to lose," Eranzia says. "I
have no reason to cheat. I didn't have then either." He declines to
explain further. "They tattooed me, so fine," he says. "Do I look
like I'm worried about it? Does it look like it's killed our company?
We've done quite well, thank you."
5. If you could go back in time and do one thing differently
in your business, what would it be?
That is true in part because Franzia knows how to find a barNot playing golf in my earlier stages and working harder.
gain. He snaps up wines, grapes, labels, and land when prices are
low, often during foreclosures or bankruptcies. "Fred has got his
6. What part of your job would you gladly give up?
ears to the ground," says Marc Mondavi. "He's always asking, always
None.
listening. What's going on? Anybody in trouble?" The wine industry is violently cyclical, and Bronco tends to emerge from each
7. What's the simplest thing you've never learned to do?
down cycle with more land, more labels, and less debt. "You know
Turn on the oven in my house. I don't know how to do it. I
how they say buy low and sell high?" says Michael Mondavi. "He
can't get it to work.
bought low and doesn't sell. He builds."
The most famous example of Franzia's savvy, the Two Buck Chuck
8. Who's the smartest person you know?
story, has become an industry legend. In 1995, Franzia bought the
That group of people who are able to shoot something in the
Charles Shaw label from a Napa Valley winery that had gone into
air and get it to circle Mars, That's knowledge beyond combankruptcy. The label sat in a drawer with dozens of others until
prehension. The idea they could shoot something off a launch
2002, when the wine market was flooded by excess inventory. Grape
pad somewhere in the world and put it in an orbit around
prices plunged and many wineries sold bulk wines at a loss. Bronco
the moon, around Mars, or wherever, it's like aligning the
became one of the few success stories of the year when it struck a deal
stars. That type of intelligence you don't deal with every day
with the Trader Joes chain to sell an ultravalue wine for $1.99. (It's
generally $3.99 outside California.) With its own bottling facilities
9. Who gives you the best advice about your business?
and distribution system, and with the market awash in cheap, decent
My mirror.
wines. Bronco could produce an ultravalue wine and still make money. Bronco resurrected the Charles Shaw label, which soon picked up
10. What keeps you up at night?
the nickname Two Buck Chuck. Critics pronounced it surprisingly
Everything.
drinkable; the editors of the trade publication Wines & Vines picked
MAY 2006
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FRED FRANZIA
a Two Buck Chuck over a $67
Chardonnay. Two Buck Chuck became the fastest-growing wine label
ever and Bronco now sellsfivemillion to six million cases of it annually in five varietals. Franzia dreams
of repeating the coup on a larger
scale by developing an ultravalue
line for a major chain like Costco,
Wal-Mart, or Target. But he says the
big retailers remain unwilling to accept such a slim profit margin.
Thanks to Two Buck Chuck,
Bronco was named winery ofthe
year at the 2003 United Wine and
Grape Symposium. When the announcement was made, the Western Farm Press reported, "the
ballroom literally erupted in disbelief and contempt."
BRONCO, MEANWHILE, BECAME
embroiled in another dispute that
went heyond taste. This time it
centered on labeling laws.
During the years that Franzia
Give the People What They Want For years, Franzia said oak barrels were a crock, and that he'd stick
was building his business in the
to stainless steel. It turned out the mariot wanted oaky wines. Bronco now has 100,000 barrels.
San Joaquin Valley, Napa solidified
a reputation as the mecca of American winemaking. It has almost
graphical place, at least 75 percent ofthe grapes in the wine must
400 wineries, roughly one quarter ofthe total in California, and is have been grown within that region—85 percent in the case of fedhy far the most recognized appellation in the USA. Napa Valley erally designated American viticultural areas. But a grandfather
produces just 4 percent of California wine by volume but earns $2.3 clause exempts labels that existed prior to 1986. This meant that
billion in sales—about a quarter ofthe state total. On average, Napa Bronco could, and did, sell Napa-labeled wines using grapes grown
labels are 61 percent more expensive than those with a generic elsewhere, a tactic already employed by Beringer. (Labels identify
California designation. The valley has become a magnet for busi- the source ofthe grapes in smaller print.) At the time, Napa Valley
ness moguls and celebrities with aspirations—and money—for Cabernet Sauvignon grapes sold for about $2,600 a ton; grapes
making great wine, including director Francis Ford Coppola, foot- from the Central Valley sold for $600 a ton. According to court
records. Bronco sold 300,000 cases of Rutherford, Napa Creek, and
ball star Joe Montana, and racecar driver Mario Andretti.
"They don't impress me one bit," Franzia says of the Napa Napa Ridge wines—$17 million worth—per year.
Napa vintners saw this as an act of
piracy. And they feared it was about to
get worse. In the city of Napa, Bronco
was building a massive bottling plant
capable of churning out 216 million
bottles a year—more than twice the
output of all tbe Napa County wineries
combined. The vintners lobbied state
legislators to close the loophole, and in
2000, the California legislature passed a
law requiring wines whose labels bore
winemakers. "You know, I've purchased a lot of wineries and the name Napa or any federally recognized viticultural area withproducts from people who pretended they were pretty rich. When in Napa County to contain at least 75 percent local grapes.
Bronco sued to stop the state from enforcing the law. The Napa
they cash in their chips, we're there to buy them."
And therein lay the roots ofthe conflict. In 1993, Bronco bought Valley Vintners Association, which represents about 250 wineries,
the Napa Creek label. The following year, it acquired the Ruther- filed as an intervenor on behalf of the state. The case began a tortuford Vintners brand, named after a community in Napa Valley. In ous six-year legal odyssey through the state and federal courts.
"He's just an opportunist," says Tom Shelton, president and
2000, Bronco paid more than $40 million to buy Napa Ridge from
CFO of Joseph Phelps Vineyards. "I think he missed the ethics
Beringer Wine Estates.
Federal law requires that if a wine bears the name of a geo- course in college—he was out that day. He doesn't understand
"They tattooed me, so fine,"
Franzia says. "Do I iook iike i'ni
vvorrie^ about it? Does it look iike
ifs killed our company?"
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FRED FRANZIA
what the hullabaloo is all about."
Shelton and Franzia first crossed in the 1990s when Shelton
began getting calls from friends joking about Bronco buying the
Pbelps winery. Soon he found out why: Bronco had run an ad that
mocked the idea of Napa terroir, and the picture in the ad showed
the Phelps Vineyard in the heart of Napa Valley. (Bronco apparently didn't laiow that was the case when it bought the photo.)
Shelton phoned Bronco. Franzia told him to buzz off.
Shelton recounts the story as he sits in his oflice at Phelps, in a
helping them in a backhanded way. He's introducing consumers to
good wine; they could well trade up as their palettes become more
discriminating. "People love him or hate him, but they have to privately admit that he has introduced one hell of a lot of new consumers to wines that taste good," says Michael Mondavi. "Because of that,
he has helped members in the industry who despise him."
And there's another hole in the Franzia-as-scourge-of-Napa story: He is a major player in the horse-trading of wine and grapes.
"When I was looking for wine, Fred would be one of the first people
I would call," says Richard Grant Peterson, a longtime Napa vintner. "I
knew that if he had wine I could use,
it would be priced fairly, good quality,
and the deal I made on the phone
would be good." In fact, Franzia did
business with many Napa wineries
even as the vintners association was
embroiled in litigation against him.
Some even turn to Bronco to
bottle their wines. In southern
Napa County, where the valley opens up into a broad plain near
San Pablo Bay, stands a Mediterranean building with a red tile
roof, a bubbling fountain, and flower beds. No sign advertises its
identity: Bronco's Napa bottling plant.
Wine arrives in tanker trucks from Ceres and elsewhere and
moves out again within 24 hours witb a Napa bottling address on
the labels. Inside bottles clink along conveyors where they are
cleaned, filled, corked, labeled, and boxed in seconds. Bronco officials say they bottle for Napa wineries such as Beringer, Markham,
and others that they decline to identify. "This line will put out about
240 bottles per minute," says Bob Stashak, tbe plant's general manager, as he stands beside one ofthe three lines. "They're running 24
hours a day,fivedays a week. When we get to the holidays, we kick
in with a sixth and seventh day."
Franzia cracks jokes
about Napa being an auto pans store,
and wonders why nobody sues over
London Fog or Hawaiian Puncii.
beautiful building designed by a noted architect. On the shelf sit
Pheips wines that sell for $45 to $200 per bottle. A hostess leads a
wine tasting on the patio outside. Sheep graze in the vineyards
below, part of biodynamic farming techniques to emulate the traditional European vineyard. "Fred Franzia and Joseph Phelps Vineyards are not even in the same industry," says Shelton. "The real
danger of opportunists like Fred Franzia is that a lot of our brand
strength is related to the association between place, style, and quality. If you misappropriate the name Napa and diminish that, then
you are damaging my prospects in the marketplace."
Many of Franzia's loudest critics in Napa come from smaller
wineries. The industry has undergone a wave of consolidation, and
the 25 largest Cahfornia wineries now ship 82 percent ofthe state's
wine. Small wineries cannot compete with giants based on price,
so they often seek niches as artisanal or boutique operations. The
Kapa address adds valuable cachet, and winemakers pay for it:
Napa vineyards can exceed $350,000 per acre, versus an average of
$10,000 in the Centra! Valley. The Napa Valley vintners—more
than half of whom produce fewer than 10,000 cases per year—protect their name as one of their most prized assets and bolster it with
PR, such as tbe slogan "To a wine grape, it's Eden."
Franzia dismisses this, of course, as Napa propaganda. "Calitbrnta wine shouldn't be divided up into these little oligopoly appellations," he says. "They try to create a myth to keep the consumer
from buying other people's wine." Napa vintners beg to differ. "Why
are so many people willing to pay $50 for a Napa Valley Cabernet?"
fumes Dennis Groth, owner of Groth Vineyards and Winery in
Oakville. "His implication is those rich guys up there are all cheating the consumer. Well, he's the one cheating the consumer."
Animosity runs deep. Franzia has tried to have Groth removed
from the board ofthe Wine Institute, an industry group. He cracks
jokes about Napa being an auto parts store, and wonders why nobody sues over London Fog or Hawaiian Punch. When an appeals
court ruled against Franzia on the appellation issue. Bronco surprised everybody by quickly releasing a $3.99 Napa Creek Chardonnay and Merlot, with Napa grapes, nicknamed Four Buck Fred.
Franzia gave the impression of a guy who enjoyed a good fight.
"These f—ing guys have no mind-games capability," he says of his
Napa critics. "Guys iike that are no challenge to me."
Despite Franzia's constant tweaking of Napa vintners, he may be
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IN JANUARY, THE U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Bronco's final appeal. Franzia had exhausted his legal options. The Napa vintners celebrated by putting out a press release that said, "Corks are
popping at wineries throughout Napa Valley." Franzia sat in his
office in Ceres, shook his head, and called it a case of government
protecting a Napa oligopoly. "Shame on them for thinking that's a
victory," he said. "What they've done is hurt the free enterprise
system and made bad law."
He's not done with Napa. On the desk sits a plan for another
development on 85 acres near the Napa bottling plant. He stabs a
finger at the map. "We're going to put another winery in here, a
glass plant in there, and a warehouse in here. We'll have office
buildings. We've got it all laid out."
His prediction for the nextfiveyears: more volume, more labels,
more success. He talks of a new wine called Napa River, made with
real Napa grapes, that will sell for less than $5. Critics claim that
such prices cannot be sustained, but Franzia repeats one of his
maxims: "I make money at it or I don't do it."
The dustup over the legal case has eclipsed the fact that Bronco
already has several other labels made with Napa wines purchased
on the bulk market. And a big harvest of 2005 bodes well for Bronco. "Many people," says Franzia, "are holding excess inventories in
Napa that don't want to sell them—yet." O
Kcrmil Pattison is afreelancewriter in St. Paul, Minnesota.