RNDC to Sell Off Oregon and Washington Markets to Columbia Distributing, With More Moves to Come
After Republic National Distributing Company (RNDC) withdrew from California in 2025 and sold off twelve of its markets to Reyes Beverage Group (RBG) earlier this year, the shakedown is set to continue. RNDC — once the second-largest wine and spirits distributor in the U.S. — plans to hand over the majority of its operations to multiple competitors, including Martignetti Companies and Columbia Distributing, Shanken News Daily reports.
In a non-binding letter of intent with Martignetti, RNDC revealed it would sell off its operations in control states: Alabama, Iowa, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming. The agreement would also have Martignetti take over brokerage in Idaho, Michigan, Oregon, and Virginia.
RNDC signed an additional letter of intent with Columbia to sell its markets in Oregon and Washington and set up an “asset arrangement” in Alaska, per an announcement from Columbia. The move would bolster Columbia’s already-established footprint in the Pacific Northwest.
RNDC’s business has been taking hits since early 2023 when the Sazerac Company ended its longstanding partnership with RNDC after the distributor allegedly defaulted on $38.6 million in invoices for Sazerac products. Two years later, Tito’s pivoted from RNDC to RBG in California, prompting more brands in the state like High Noon and Cutwater to begin pulling their business from RNDC en masse. From there, other competitors like Breakthru Beverage Group and Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits swooped in.
RNDC maintains that its deal with RBC is poised to close in May, according to Shanken. Should its plans with Martignetti, Columbia, and others follow, what will become of the RNDC’s — which once distributed across 38 states — remaining markets is uncertain.
VP Pro Take
“Last week, current and former workers for Republic National Distributing Company tipped me off that Tito’s Handmade Vodka would depart from the troubled mega-wholesaler’s portfolio in Washington State. (Neither company responded for comment.) Texting with another source, a longtime beverage-alcohol industry veteran in the Pacific Northwest, I remarked that with the category-leading vodka brand out the door in another of RNDC’s territories, the remainder of the company could really unravel fast.
“Failed slowly then all at once,” they quipped back, channeling Ernest Hemingway. (I’ve granted this source anonymity to speak candidly about the situation at RNDC, their former distributor, without disrupting sensitive professional relationships.)
That was Sunday night. It turns out Monday was the “all at once.”
After spending the first quarter of 2026 in a “will they/won’t they/oh sh*t they will even more than we previously thought” dance with Reyes Beverage Group for 11 of its markets, it was clear that RNDC’s days as a national player were well and truly over. But these letters of intent — taken together with Shanken’s report that RNDC is reexamining the joint venture it formed with Opici Family Distributing in New York just four years ago and already in “advanced discussions” with a buyer for its business across the Great Plains — suggest that its days as a going concern may be drawing to a close, too.
While these deals aren’t yet done, their existence makes it imperative to consider how they might reconfigure the rapidly changing middle tier. Watch for Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits to make a play for White Mountain Beverage, the Anheuser-Busch InBev distributorship RNDC bought in 2022 as part of its purchase of K&L. Watch for the revelation of this mystery buyer angling for RNDC’s markets in the heartland. If it’s not Breakthru Beverage Group on the other end of those “discussions,” you’d have to figure the Chicago wholesaler has another move in mind, because SGWS and RBG have already made theirs. There are generational gains on the board, especially given the Trump administration’s corrupt approach to antitrust regulation. We’re watching the entire business take the shape it will hold for years to come.
As ever, there will be winners and losers. The consolidators — RBG, SWGS, Columbia, Martignetti, etc. — are winning, scooping up brands and business units from a rival as it collapses under the weight of its own ambition. (At least on the surface; integration poses its own challenges, as the agonizing demise of poorly integrated RNDC aptly demonstrates.) Big suppliers stand to benefit, too, capturing efficiencies from dealing with fewer wholesalers across more markets and more attention from ‘em, too. Small wine and spirits suppliers in RNDC’s book are in a bad way: Many have told me they’re still waiting on months’-worth of remittances from the ailing distributor and are now facing a future fraught with less market access that runs through successor firms with more market power.
Perhaps the worst fate awaits RNDC’s beleaguered workforce, which has watched with a mix of gallows humor and genuine despair as the company’s catastrophic exit from California kicked off the corporate nosedive in earnest. The job market sucks, wine and spirits sales are down, and the middle-tier heavyweights now carving up the company’s carcass are almost certainly planning to squeeze “synergies” out of labor costs. If and when these deals close, layoffs will probably follow. In late January, when I broke the news that Delicato Family Wines was exiting RNDC in almost half its markets, an employee at RNDC (speaking anonymously to avoid retaliation) texted me a wry assessment of the development: “More good news from the good news factory.”
Roughly three months later, the “good news factory” is selling off everything that isn’t bolted to the ground. It’s hard to imagine worse news for its workers. If you work at RNDC or a supplier distributed by the company and want to share your perspective from within the firm, please email me at dave@dinfontay.com or text dinfontay.11 on Signal. Anonymity available.” —Dave Infante, VinePair columnist and contributing editor
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