Putney Mountain Winery is now Employee Owned!

VEOC is excited to welcome Putney Mountain Winery to Vermont’s community of employee-owned companies following its purchase by the “Fermented Five”, organized as a worker cooperative, on July 29th!

Founded by Charles and Kate Dodge in 2005, the company specializes in fruit wines with a focus on sourcing locally grown fruit, and more recently added a distilling component to the business. Charles first engaged with the employee ownership exit option when he attended a seminar hosted by VEOC in 2014, and we stayed in touch over the subsequent years as the idea fermented.

The ownership succession process kicked into gear in 2024, when a group of current and former employees decided to come together to organize a worker cooperative to explore making an offer. At that point, VEOC staff member Annie Winkler, with support from the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation and Vermont Small Business Development Center, began meeting with the employee group regularly as they worked through the process of developing their organizational and financing plan.

When it came time for the transaction, VEOC also provided support via our Vermont Employee Ownership Loan Fund, which participated in a loan to the cooperative made by the Cooperative Fund of the Northeast. In small employee-ownership deals, it is not uncommon for there to be a deficit between the available equity/collateral and the amount of capital required from an outside lender. In such situations, our revolving loan fund can serve the role of a gap filler by taking a “second position” behind the lead lender to help make the loan more feasible.

For a deeper dive into the company and deal, check out this great article from The Commons News.