(Wines&Vines) - Though you might expect the biggest concerns at the 25th Wine Industry Financial Symposium held Sept. 26 and 27 in Napa to be the economy, the election, water or the grape crop this year, no topic got more attention than mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

From symposium founder David Freed’s keynote—and possible finale—to two separate panels of experts and inclusion in most other talks, the meeting was abuzz about the unprecedented stream of acquisitions of wineries, brands and vineyards in the past few years—not to mention mergers, but those were primarily in distribution and retailing, and are equally impacting the industry.