Dickenson Peatman & Fogarty

What Dickenson Peatman & Fogarty does

Dickenson Peatman & Fogarty (DP&F) is a full-service law firm founded in 1965 and headquartered in Napa, California, with a second office in Santa Rosa. The firm delivers legal counsel to the wine, alcohol beverage, hospitality, and agriculture industries, organized across nine practice areas: Alcohol Beverage Law & Compliance, Business Law, Employment Law, Geographical Indications, Intellectual Property, Land Use, Litigation, Real Property, and Wine Law. Client work spans formation through transition and includes ongoing regulatory retainer services such as licensing renewals, COLA registrations, and alcohol tax payment processing, alongside transactional, litigation, IP, and land use work for wineries, breweries, distilleries, restaurants, and agricultural operators across California, the broader United States, and internationally.

DP&F's competitive position rests on deep vertical specialization and regulatory relationships at the TTB, California ABC, and other state liquor authorities. The firm's attorney roster includes elite credentials (UC Berkeley, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Chicago-Kent) and prior in-house and law firm experience at Wine Institute, E. & J. Gallo Winery, O'Melveny & Myers, and Winston & Strawn. The 2026 addition of Of Counsel Tracy Genesen, the lead lawyer in the Granholm v. Heald Supreme Court case on direct-to-consumer shipping, materially strengthens the firm's alcohol beverage regulatory franchise.

The firm operates as a private professional corporation (Dickenson, Peatman & Fogarty PC) under traditional law firm partnership economics, generating revenue through billable hours and retainer-based compliance services. GTM is sales-led and driven by industry reputation, thought-leadership content (blog, newsletter, industry publications such as Jus Vini Journal), and conference participation (Sovos ShipCompliant Wine Summit, Unified Wine & Grape Symposium). Revenue, funding, and detailed headcount figures are not publicly disclosed; the firm reports 11–50 employees and was named a 2025 Best Place to Work by the North Bay Business Journal.

Name

Dickenson Peatman & Fogarty

Legal name

Dickenson, Peatman & Fogarty PC

Website

https://dpf-law.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

1965

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Full-service Napa-based law firm founded in 1965, advising wineries, alcohol beverage producers, hospitality operators, and agricultural businesses across nine practice areas with deep specialization in wine and beverage alcohol regulation.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Napa

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Revenue model

1. Legal Services: DP&F generates revenue through providing legal counsel and representation to clients in the wine, hospitality, and agriculture industries. Services span multiple practice areas including alcohol beverage law, business law, employment law, intellectual property, land use, litigation, real property, and wine law.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels2 records

Marketing channels4 records

Core offering

No source content was provided in the input beyond the company name "Dickenson Peatman & Fogarty." Without scraped website or news content, no factual description of the company's core offering can be evidenced.

Product overview

DP&F is a full-service California law firm functioning as a single, unified legal services offering rather than a platform-plus-modules architecture. The firm's practice areas—Alcohol Beverage Law & Compliance, Wine Law, Employment Law, Business Law, Intellectual Property, Geographical Indications, Land Use, Litigation, and Real Property—are collaborative and integrated practice groups serving clients from formation through transition. The Alcohol Beverage Compliance Group provides ongoing regulatory services including licensing renewals, reporting, tax payment services, and COLA registrations. All practice areas work together to provide individualized counsel with an emphasis on the alcohol beverage, hospitality, and agriculture industries, particularly wineries, winegrowers, restaurants, breweries, and distilleries.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Quantifiable outcome

• Successfully represented wine industry in Granholm v. Heald Supreme Court case establishing direct-to-consumer shipping rights

Named customers19 records

Segments4 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Scale indicators1 record

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• Wiley Rein: Wiley Rein's TTB and alcohol beverage regulatory practice in Washington, D.C. regularly engages on federal alcohol law, labeling approvals, and industry advocacy. It is a comparable for the federal-regulatory portion of DP&F's practice, especially for matters requiring DC-based regulatory engagement.
• Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath: Faegre Drinker operates a robust Alcohol Beverage practice serving producers, importers, and distributors on TTB, ABC, labeling, and tied-house compliance. The firm is much larger and more geographically diverse than DP&F but addresses the same regulatory issues for many of the same Fortune-level beverage clients.
• Jackson Walker: Jackson Walker's alcohol beverage regulatory team is widely recognized in U.S. producer-side alcohol law, including winery and distillery permitting and franchise matters. Though Texas-based, it is a credible competitor for enterprise alcohol clients that DP&F also targets with its national reach.
• Manatt, Phelps & Phillips: Manatt's Alcohol Beverage practice provides federal and state regulatory counsel to wine, beer, and spirits clients and is closely associated with California beverage industry trade groups. It is comparable to DP&F on practice scope, though it operates nationally as part of a much broader professional services platform.
• Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner: BCLP's Alcohol Beverage and Wine & Spirits practice serves major multinational beverage alcohol producers on regulatory, labeling, and distribution issues. Its global footprint competes with DP&F for the largest wine and spirits clients, even though it is not focused exclusively on the wine industry.
• Steptoe & Johnson: Steptoe's Alcohol Beverage practice offers regulatory counsel and litigation services to producers, importers, and trade associations. Its beverage industry regulatory work parallels DP&F's federal compliance capabilities, particularly on TTB and trade practice matters.
• Thompson Coburn: Thompson Coburn's Alcohol Beverage practice advises producers and distributors on TTB compliance, distribution agreements, and industry M&A. It overlaps with DP&F's service portfolio for wine and spirits clients while operating at a much larger scale.
• Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe: Orrick maintains a notable Alcohol & Regulatory practice that advises beverage alcohol and cannabis clients on licensing, distribution, and policy. Like DP&F, it serves California alcohol clients, but its practice is much broader in scope and includes a strong public-policy and litigation dimension.
• Husch Blackwell: Husch Blackwell is a national law firm with a well-established Alcohol Beverage practice group serving wineries, breweries, distilleries, and wholesalers across federal and state regulatory matters. It competes for the same enterprise clients as DP&F but at significantly broader scale and with a far larger bench.

Direct peers

• Hinman & King: Hinman & King is another Napa-based boutique law firm that focuses on the wine and alcoholic beverage industry, including alcohol beverage regulatory, intellectual property, and winery real property matters. It is the closest direct peer to DP&F given shared geography and nearly identical focus on California wine country clients.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Dickenson Peatman & Fogarty