Anderson Valley Brewing Sold to Local Wine Veteran

March 27, 2025 – Anderson Valley Brewing Company has finally been sold, more than 6 months after it went up for sale by its owners. The Boonville, California brewery will now be helmed by Jason McConnell, a Mendocino local who had previously co-founded Ukiah-based winery Rivino in 2008. Although the purchase price was not disclosed, the company was originally listed in September of last year for $7.9 million.

McConnell will become the fourth owner of the brewery since its founding in 1987. Anderson Valley Brewing was created by David Norfleet and Kim and Ken Allen in the quiet Mendocino County town of Boonville nearly 40 years ago. In 2010, they sold the business to Trey White and two silent partners, who sold it again in 2019 to Kevin McGee and his family. McGee had made a name for himself first as an attorney for Jackson Family Wines, and later as the founder of Healdsburg Brewing Company in 2007. It’s unclear if the Healdsburg brand, which was revitalized as part of McGee’s purchase of Anderson Valley, was included in the sale.

Shortly after purchasing Anderson Valley, McGee attempted to switch his distribution from Reyes Beverage Group (the sixth largest privately held company in the United States) to three other distributors. Reyes reportedly asked for several million dollars for the “fair market value” of the distribution rights to allow the deal to go through, a request which McGee did not accept. In March of 2020, McGee’s holding company Mainsheet Capital informed Reyes that it was transferring its distribution rights to the other distributors, and three days later, Reyes sued.

Last year, the judge in that case ruled in Anderson Valley’s favor, saying that Reyes’ interpretation of the law “would lead to an absurd result.” The victory, however, was apparently not enticing enough for McGee to stay in the business.

McConnell purchased the Anderson Valley brand after leaving Rivino in 2023. The hip winery he founded with his then-wife Suzanne Jahnke in 2008 had become part of a dispute in their divorce, with the judge eventually granting ownership of the property to Jahnke. He came to purchase Anderson Valley in spite of not being a beer drinker himself. According to reporting from the San Francisco Chronicle, beer has always made McConnell sick – though he does find that the brewery’s signature gose doesn’t give him the same reaction.