Allan Brothers, a tree fruit grower-shipper-packer of Yakima Valley, Washington, is buying Sagemoor Farms’s orchards and vineyards, effective at the end of April.
Allan Brothers, with a long farming history in the Yakima Valley of nearly 100 years, is headquartered in Naches. The family grows, packs, and ships apples and cherries. The Sagemoor Farms and Sagemoor Vineyards acquisition totals 880 acres of wine grapes, 230 acres of cherries, and 190 acres of apples, bringing the Allan Brothers’s holdings to around 2,400 acres. Terms of the sale were undisclosed.
The Sagemoor management team will remain in place, said Kent Waliser, general manager of Sagemoor. He noted that the sale was part of the exit strategy for the founding partners of Sagemoor.
“I’ve known George and Dave Allan for around 30 years and have served with them on various tree fruit industry organizations and boards,” Waliser told Good Fruit Grower. “Through the years, I’ve admired their progressiveness, honesty, integrity, and counsel. It’s a comfortable fit, and we have an excellent relationship.”
Waliser is looking forward to collaborating on horticultural practices with the Allans in the Sagemoor orchards. “They’re some of the most progressive tree fruit guys I know, and they’ll be able to challenge us.”
The linkage between Sagemoor and Allan Brothers goes beyond personal relationships. Allan Brothers has packed some of Sagemoor’s cherries for many years. Both companies grow Jazz, Pacific Rose, and Envy, apple varieties that are part of the managed variety program of ENZA, a New Zealand apple and pear company.
“All of this history between us helped create interest on their part and our part,” he said. “We decided to marry all that up. It was an easy fit, especially with our tree fruit that comes from an early site. The wine grapes side helps them diversify.”
Sagemoor Farms was founded in 1968 by Alec Bayless and played a pioneering role in helping establish Washington’s wine industry, supplying early wineries with grapes. Many of the company’s initial vineyards planted in 1972 are still producing. Today, some 70 wineries purchase fruit from three coveted vineyard properties: Bacchus, Dionysus, and Weinbau.
Miles Kohl, chief operating officer for Allan Brothers, said in a news release that the family has been looking to diversify for some time in Washington’s wine grape industry. “When the opportunity came up to acquire the well-known Sagemoor properties, we recognized that this was the right way for Allan Brothers to enter Washington’s dynamic wine business,” he stated.
International Wine Associates of Healdsburg, California, and The West One Group in Walla Walla, Washington, served as exclusive advisors and represented Sagemoor in the transaction.
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