Orange County execs like their wine.
On the heels of our exclusive last month on Newport Beach’s Gary Jabara’s impending purchase of The Estates Yountville resort, a deal expected to run $300 million or so, officials from Chapman University noted that their Argyros School of Business and Economics’ Board of Counselors held its 2021 Retreat last month nearby in Napa Valley.
Members of the board, alongside President Daniele Struppa and Business School Dean Thomas Turk “spent the day at Bill Harlan’s iconic Napa Valley Reserve, where board member Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks is a member,” the school told the Business Journal.
The following day local hotel exec and winemaker Don Sodaro and his wife, Deedee, hosted the board—which includes Business Journal Publisher Richard Reisman and Wells Fargo EVP Patty Juarez, among others—at the Sodaro Estate Winery in Napa.
Last year’s board event was canceled due to the pandemic.
Board members “were treated to a wine education and tasting class by award-winning sommelier and author Kelli White, who was named one of Food & Wine’s top 10 sommeliers in the country,” Chapman said.
Among the wines shared was Vlahakis-Hanks’ ECOSology, made in the Napa Valley Reserve member program by noted winemaker Marco Gressi.
Vlahakis-Hanks is CEO of family-owned Earth Friendly Products, based in Cypress. The maker of green cleaning products sold under the ECOS brand last month toasted its General Counsel, Amber Enriquez, who was awarded a GC Award at the Business Journal’s annual event.
Visitors to the Napa Valley town of Yountville are encouraged to visit a pair of tasting rooms not far from the Estate, Handwritten Tasting Library and Jessup Cellars. The ownership teams for both include OC’s Kelly and Jim Mazzo, the latter of whom is a new board member of eye care drugmaker TearLab and a longtime trustee at Chapman University.
Orange County SC players and staff were looking to uncork champagne, not wine, following the soccer club’s Nov. 28 win on the home field of the favored Tampa Bay Rowdies, giving them the title of 2021 USL Championship Winners.
OCSC plays in the 31-team USL, the second division in the country’s hierarchy of the sport.
It’s the franchise’s first title and it comes about five years after James Keston took over majority ownership of the club. Among his first acts, Keston moved the team to the new (and now aptly named) Championship Soccer Stadium at Irvine’s Great Park.
A title didn’t appear to be in the cards as recently as August, when the club changed coaches, bringing in former player Richard Chaplow. The club rallied, made the playoffs, and held their nerve and won a pair of penalty kick shootouts in their run to the final, and then shocked the favorite Rowdies and their home crowd with a 3-goal first half that put the game out of reach.
“I couldn’t be happier for the club and the organization,” President of Soccer Operations and GM Oliver Wyss said after the match. “It’s going to take time for this to actually sink in.”
