Matt Talbert, the new owner of JanKris Winery, is a self-made international entrepreneur. He said he has major plans for renovating the property and bringing in new winemaking talent.
Matt Talbert has worked all over the world, in industries as diverse as jewelry, aviation acoustics, magazine publishing and financial strategies for developing nations.
The one thing in common among all of his businesses has been finding a diamond in the rough, and today the winery he just bought in Templeton is no different.
“Usually what I would do is I would find a distressed business and I would revamp it,” Talbert said of the many businesses he has bought and sold over the past 20 years.
That model held true for Flight Environments Inc., which Talbert purchased in 1997 as a failed aviation acoustics company. Within two years, he built it into a worldwide leader in aviation insulation and acoustics.
“I built that from virtually nothing into the second largest insulation company in the world in 18 months,” Talbert said.
Other companies he bought under “distressed” conditions were Sunswept Pacific Communications, an events production firm, and Contract Publishing, a publishing firm in Beverly Hills, along with several others.
But he started his career at Cal Poly as an accounting major and always dreamed of “coming back.”
He made that first step in moving his aviation company from Los Angeles to Paso Robles 10 years ago.
But when his last venture, International Trade Finance Corp.—a business he founded to create alternative financing strategies for developing nations —got to be more than he could handle, he decided to take his career in a different direction.
“It was what I wanted to do my whole life,” Talbert said about his last venture, “and it turned into a
tremendous success. It just became a little too big a little too fast.”
After three heart attacks, he decided it was time to retire. But at the age of 48, he quickly got bored.
With a lifelong interest and passion for wine, the self-described “type triple-
A personality” started looking for a winery to buy in the area.
After bidding and losing in one attempt, he came across the JanKris Winery in Templeton.
JanKris, which was established in 1990 by Mark and Paula Gendron, had been going through difficult financial problems for some time.
It entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in December 2005 and was finally put up for auction early this year.
The property consisted of 60 acres on Bethel Road off Highway 46 West, and an additional 50 acres on El Pomar Road, and they made close to 13,000 cases of wine last year.
Talbert wasn’t the only bidder for the property.
“There were three bidders, and I wasn’t the highest bid,” he explains, “but I was the best bid.”
The sale price was close to $4.5 million for the vineyards, the facilities and the inventory. He closed the sale March 26 and immediately started making plans for renovating the facilities and the grounds.
The first step involved remodeling the tasting room, which is in the original house on the property, built in 1892.
“We’re redoing the whole thing,” Talbert said. That includes the old barn on the property, which he is turning into a “major events center” for weddings and special events.
As an exotic car enthusiast with connections in the race-car industry, Talbert said he is already planning major automobile events at the winery, some which he describes as “national-attention events.”
Talbert has no plans to change the name of the winery, which was originally coined after the Gendrons’ daughters January and Kristin.
“JanKris has been here forever,” Talbert said. “It was a very, very good winery; it is a landmark.”
What Talbert does plan to do is add another label, and at this time he is working through the approval process to get that done.
He has also hired a new winemaking consultant, Daniel Daou of Daou Vineyards, and he is in talks with another prominent winemaker from Napa Valley.
“JanKris has had some difficult times over the past few years, so we’re going to patch all those up and move on,” Talbert said.
Also in his plans is getting out to the distributors and retailers in the 32 states that JanKris wines are currently distributed in.
That will be relatively easy for Talbert, a licensed pilot with his own plane at the Paso Robles airport.
But his life here — and his travels—are much different than what he experienced in his previous career.
“With (International Trade Finance Corp.) I was traveling extensively, to some of the worst places in the world,” Talbert said. “Here my commute to work is five minutes, and that works much better.”
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