At Farris LLP she guides clients through ownership shifts and policy challenges
Megan O’Neill didn’t plan to specialize in winery acquisitions, but today she’s the lawyer behind more than 45 transactions in British Columbia’s wine sector. “It happened kind of serendipitously and organically,” she says. After completing a single transaction for a winery in the Okanagan, the work kept coming. “We kept doing more and more transactions until we really became the go-to lawyers in this space.”
From there, she built her practice deal by deal. She’s been mentored by Al Hudec at Farris, the BC firm where she has spent her entire legal career.
O’Neill, now a senior associate, has executed more than 45 winery purchase and sale transactions. Her practice has grown alongside a wave of generational change sweeping through British Columbia’s wine industry. “There are a lot of baby boomers who own family wineries, who are retiring and wanting to sell. Their kids don’t want to take over,” she explains. “So there were a lot of exit transactions in the past two to seven years.” That exit trend collided perfectly with O’Neill’s early legal career, her hospitality roots, and a growing appetite for regulatory insight in a notoriously complex industry.
She brings both personal passion and sharp business instincts to the work. “I come from a hospitality background in my family,” she says. “So the kind of connection with food and wine, tourism, hospitality really drew me in.” Her academic path included a hospitality degree from Cornell University before pivoting to law, which she describes as a return to her “core passion.”
But the wine industry isn’t just about idyllic vineyards and romantic notions of terroir. “Wine deals are complicated, both because it is a complicated industry and because there is a complicated regulatory overlay,” she says. Buying a winery means acquiring not just land, but also a farm, a manufacturing operation, and a brand – all in a jurisdiction known for tangled liquor laws. In BC, that means juggling layers of rules from the Liquor Distribution Branch, Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch, and the Agricultural Land Reserve.
“I apply my M&A toolbox, but in addition, a lot of industry-specific knowledge,” O’Neill says. “What I’m able to do is really cut through to focus on the key due diligence issues.” She’s known for zeroing in on risks related to access to water, vineyard conditions, and land-use regulations – precisely the points that can make or break a deal.
She’s also helped clients innovate around structural challenges. One example involves younger entrants to the industry who lack the capital to buy a vineyard. “We have developed ways for them to enter the industry by way of a custom crush agreement,” she says, where newcomers use an established winery’s license to produce and sell their wine. Another recent problem was how to salvage production after devastating cold spells ruined crops. “We advocated for temporary relief,” she says, working out a path to import grapes or juice from Washington state despite local laws prioritizing 100 percent BC-grown wine.
Compounding the regulatory complexity is a shifting market landscape. “There’s falling demand for wine internationally,” she says. “Younger generations just aren’t drinking as much… or at least are drinking differently – different alcohol, different occasions, different styles of wine.” That shift in consumer habits is compounding the stress caused by climate volatility and escalating input costs.
Against that backdrop, O’Neill has become not only a transaction lawyer, but a strategic advisor. “There’s a lot of handshake deals in the wine industry,” she notes. “What I’m trying to do is elevate the industry by just tightening up our legal agreements.” She has developed templates for vineyard leases, grape purchase agreements, and contract manufacturing deals – all fine-tuned to reflect local nuances.
She invests heavily in showing up – at events, at conferences, and within the community – nurturing her reputation as a trusted connector. “It’s a small world and everybody’s connected in the BC wine industry,” she says. “So I really try to learn so that I can walk the walk of the industry.”
Her advocacy also reaches beyond private clients. O’Neill has been at the forefront of interprovincial trade reform, a hot-button issue as provinces continue to restrict the free movement of wine within Canada. “It has been harder to sell into other provinces than it has been to export our wines,” she says. After contributing to the opening of the Alberta market, she’s now focused on the rest of the country. But she warns that some provinces are replacing outdated rules with burdensome new ones: “They changed the rule to impose an ad valorem tax, which acts essentially as an interprovincial tariff.”
The dream, O’Neill says, is to make the business model more flexible. She wants to see things like satellite tasting rooms – popular in California but restricted in BC – and site-wide licensing, so wineries aren’t hemmed in by piecemeal endorsements.
Even as she navigates dense regulatory terrain, O’Neill is quick to bring the conversation back to people. “It’s such an interesting mix,” she says. “It’s young people, it’s farmers, it’s energetic businessmen who come to it as a second career… but it’s all rooted in that passion for this fermented grape juice that brings people together.”
One recent high-profile file involved representing members of the Jackson family – “wine royalty” from Sonoma and Napa – on acquisitions in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island. “We bought two wineries for them and several vineyards,” she says, a deal that helped spotlight the island’s potential as a cool climate region. She also worked with Empress Gin on its sale to a US private equity firm.
O’Neill’s advocacy extends into her role as a board member of AIDV Canada, a network of international wine lawyers. “I was very fortunate to go to the international conference in Reims, France… connecting with wine lawyers from all over the world,” she says. This June, she’ll moderate a panel on interprovincial trade at the Canadian conference hosted at her firm.
She’s also a believer in personal branding. “Anytime you do something – write an article, go to a conference, close a transaction – post about it,” she says. Her LinkedIn feed is a curated record of transactions, legal commentary, and industry updates. “Just because you don’t feel secure in it, don’t stop pushing,” she adds.
When asked about mentorship, O’Neill is unequivocal: “Al [Hudec] has been so paramount and critical to my career.” Hudec spends half the year in the Okanagan and brought not only legal acumen but deep industry relationships. “I would not be where I am today without him.”
In a field where no blueprint exists, O’Neill is building the model herself – file by file, vine by vine.
