Rest assured, Screaming Eagle sold to a devotee

When Montecitan Charles Banks and real estate billionaire Stan Kroenke bought Screaming Eagle vineyard in the middle of March, the news quickly spread around the wine world.

“There Goes the Neighborhood — Screaming Eagle Sold,” was one panicky posting to the bulletin board on wine critic Robert Parker’s Web site.

Within minutes, pessimistic wine commentators were prophesying doom for Screaming Eagle, a small cabernet-producing vineyard in Napa Valley that is one of America’s best, most coveted and expensive wines. They guessed that the winery cost Banks and Kroenke $20 million to $30 million, which they thought would lead them — gasp — to increase production greatly and diversify into crowd-pleasing, low-brow zinfandels and the like.

The comments led Banks, 38, to go online and assure everyone that he and Kroenke were “focused on quality, not quantity.”

When I met with Banks last week in his downtown office, he wouldn’t say what he had paid for the vineyard, but he did say that the former owner could certainly have made more by selling to someone else.

“She could’ve gotten more than double what we bought it for because she could’ve sold it to one of those big brands and let them prostitute it.”

Banks, on the other hand, was a Screaming Eagle fan and had been on the mailing list (it isn’t sold in stores) for years. The wine costs $300 a bottle, list members are limited to just three each, and there are 5,000 additional people on a waiting list praying for attrition despite the steep price. At auction, bottles have gone for well over $2,000, which explains why the word “cult” is often used in association with Screaming Eagle.

“If you were only doing it for the money, this is clearly the wrong business to be in, because while you might do very well long-term you will not do well short-term,” said Banks. “In every instance, you have to forego short-term profits for long-term gain.”

Banks was not only a Screaming Eagle devotee but was also in the wine business, which he had come to fairly recently and in a novel way. He has been managing money for professional athletes — often basketball players — and wealthy individuals since graduating from the University of Georgia. But half a dozen years ago, while advising a client on a shoe endorsement deal, he met Arnon Milchan, the successful movie producer and businessman who held a large stake in Puma.

“Arnon and I just hit it off and we were drinking wine one night . . . (when) Arnon mentions to me that he and Jerry Levin, who was at the time the CEO of AOL Time Warner, were getting ready to close on a piece of land in Santa Ynez.”

Noting Banks’ knowledge of wine, Milchan asked him to join them in creating a top-shelf vineyard on the property. Later, Milchan — who, like Kroenke, is a billionaire — sent his plane to collect Banks and told him, “You’re a perfect partner for us: You can’t afford to lose money.”

Banks and his wife went out to the Santa Ynez property to take a look and they decided to do it, but it wasn’t an easy decision.

“Try explaining to your wife that all your money should go into (creating a vineyard) and not into buying a house. It was a tough sell,” Banks said.

The vineyard, called Jonata after the original land grant, won’t sell wine until about a year from now, but when the previous owner of Screaming Eagle heard how well it was being run, she contacted Banks and they came to a deal quickly and quietly.

In a recent poll on Robert Parker’s bulletin board, the sale of Screaming Eagle led slightly more than 50 percent of respondents to predict that “things will get worse” for the winery. Forty-two percent and change thought the quality would stay the same, and the remaining 7 percent thought the wine would improve.

“There aren’t many times in your life you have a chance to do anything that is considered the best,” said Banks. “And so (buying Screaming Eagle) is a chance to do that. Of course, it’s also a chance to be the guy that screwed up Screaming Eagle, but we’re here to work very hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.”