Wine business advisor, 'visionary' Vic Motto dies at 84 (2024)

Vic Motto, the co-founder of Global Wine Partners and a wine business advisor, but also an artist and musician, diedat his home in Florida on Sept. 1, said a news release.

Having grown up in Florida, Motto first visited Napa Valley in the late 70s while traveling.

He traveled to the area year after year, “until I loved the place so much I decided to move here and open a business in management consulting.”

“I bootstrapped that business," into what it is today, he said.

Along with Karen Kryla in 1982, Motto founded the CPA firm Motto Kryla & Co. In 1985 Mike Fisher joined them and the firm was renamed Motto Kryla & Fisher (MKF). At that time, the partners decided to focus exclusively on serving the wine industry offering accounting, tax and financial consulting. Led by Motto, the firm’s services expanded into software development, research, management consulting, and investment banking. In 2003 the investment banking business expanded to become MKF Advisors, then merged with International Wine Consultants in Sydney, Australia to form Global Wine Partners. In 2005, both the CPA firm and the research business were sold to Frank Rimerman & Co. Today, Global Wine Partners continues to operate offering investment banking, business valuation, and wine business financial consulting. Many of today’s financial leaders in the wine industry got their start with MKF.

Motto wasn’t always in finance. After learning to play a guitar while stationed at an isolated Air Force radar site in Morocco, Motto left the military for life as a musician.

In the late 1960s, Motto and a friend started a guitar manufacturing business. It was not a success.

“I lost my shirt because I didn’t understand business,” said Motto in 2007. “So I went back to school to learn about business.”

“It all worked out,” said Motto of his career path.

As a teenager, Motto worked as a cartoonist.

"I did some work for Fred Laswell who had a cartoon strip called 'Snuffy Smith.' I was his assistant. I wanted to be a commercial illustrator. But then I got into music. Most people are surprised to learn that I started life as an artist and musician and became a business advisor, but no one is more surprised than me," he said in 2007.

Motto’s clients included many of the top wine businesses, including several major international wine companies. His early clients included Robert Mondavi.

Mondavi was quoted as saying “He’s the most important person in the California wine industry over the past 25 years. We knew how to make wine; he taught us how to make money.”

Motto held leadership roles as a director or advisor for various nonprofits, wine industry trade groups, and universities, and served on the Boards of several wine companies. A sought-after speaker on the wine industry, he was frequently quoted by major media outlets.

Prior to founding Global Wine Partners and its predecessor firms, he was an executive with a major international management-consulting firm and member of their U.S. national real estate team advising REIT’s and large-scale real estate developers and was previously in the retail wine trade as a manager and wine buyer for a large U.S. wine retail chain.

Motto is survived by his wife Sandra Timpson Motto.