(Wine-Searcher) - California's winery-go-round continues, with the latest acquisition raising existential questions about one brand in particular.

It's a cage match between wine heavyweights! In this corner, owned by the world's second-largest wine company, weighing in with tons of ripe fruit, The Prisoner! And, in the other corner, owned by the world's largest wine company, weighing in with a proven knack for success – The O.P. (Original Prisoner)!

Dave Phinney, creator of The Prisoner (now owned by Constellation Brands), laughed when told that last week. No wonder he's in a good mood, after selling his winery, Orin Swift, to E&J Gallo Winery for a sum reported to be in excess $100 million.

"I just in general don't look at the wine industry as competition," Phinney said.

Tell it to the sales guys out there fighting for store placements. Hard to imagine they won't be holding their new bottles of Machete and Trigger Finger and saying: "This guy was The Prisoner, and now he makes these."

The deal announced Thursday is unusual for Gallo, which has been snapping up vineyards near California's North Coast, in that it involves no vineyards and no winery buildings. Orin Swift does have a small tasting room in a great location in St. Helena. But Phinney has been buying all his grapes, including some of Gallo's, and making all his wine at different custom crush facilities, including some of Gallo's.

What Gallo is buying is Phinney's expertise at winemaking and brand building. The Prisoner, which he created in 1998 and sold in 2010, practically by itself created a new category of wine: a relatively expensive, high-alcohol, low-tannin, slightly sweet red blend. Phinney intially took advantage of California's surfeit of quality Zinfandel to make a wine that consumers love and are willing to pay a premium for, yet that is not beholden to any one place.

Since selling The Prisoner, he built Orin Swift back up to 100,000 cases annually of eight different brands, most with similarly edgy names and label designs: Mercury Head, Slander, China Doll. If you haven't heard of them yet, give Gallo a chance to do what it does best.

"I think the idea is to grow production responsibly," Phinney told Wine-Searcher. "Where that would have been scary with some other fruit, since I've already worked with a handful of Gallo's vineyards and know the vineyards from a grape sense, it's exciting. If you look at their portfolio of vintners, it's pretty desirable fruit, especially for what we do."

Phinney's also happy about the possibility of making his wines at Gallo's The Ranch winery on Zinfandel Lane in St. Helena; it's about five minutes from his house.