Vineyard Brands was founded in 1971 by Robert Haas. Bob began his career in 1950 working as the import buyer for M. Lehmann, his family’s wine shop in New York City which would later become Sherry Lehmann. As Bob became more interested in the import wine business and less interested in the retail business, he began importing and selling wine in markets other than New York through Leeds Imports Corporation, a wine import company started by Bob and his father. In 1967, Bob’s father retired from the wine business and Leeds Imports Corporation was sold.
In 1971, Bob moved to Vermont and founded Vineyard Brands with 2 employees. The company’s office was located in a remodeled barn on the Haas family farm in Chester, Vermont until 1997 when the company moved its headquarters to Birmingham, Alabama.
In the 1980s, Bob began to explore ways to fulfill a life-long dream to start his own winery, which would mean leaving Vineyard Brands. Bob ultimately decided to create an employee stock ownership plan (an “ESOP”) to allow the employees of Vineyard Brands to purchase the business from him to allow him to start his winery, Tablas Creek Vineyard. In the late 1990s, when the ESOP completed its purchase of the business from Bob, he fully exited from Vineyard Brands.
Today, Vineyard Brands has over 65 employees located throughout the United States and 2 offices, one in Birmingham, Alabama and the other in the heart of New York City. Our headquarters remains in Birmingham, Alabama, where we have approximately 25 employees who handle all shipping, accounting and compliance activities and the production of all promotional materials and advertising for Vineyard Brands. Our office in New York City is a sales and marketing office.
Despite our relatively small size, we have a truly national distribution network that extends to all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Our sales force, which consists of over 40 people, is divided into 8 regions, each of which is overseen by a regional manager. Recognizing the diversity of our various markets and in order to foster our entrepreneurial spirit, we give our regional managers and sales representatives a great deal of autonomy in managing their territories and markets.
Built on the same foundation upon which the company was founded, our mission remains the same – to select and offer wines of the best quality and value from the greatest places on Earth so that there is absolute confidence in any wine with “Imported by Vineyard Brands” on the label.