New custom crush facility to open on Stage Gulch Road

A huge custom-crushing facility with a starting capacity of 1 million gallons will open by mid-summer in time for the 2009 crush at a site just off Stage Gulch Road near the Sonoma Transfer Station.

The facility will be owned by Carneros Vintners, Inc., a newly-formed division of The Vintners Group which also owns a major custom crushing facility in Woodbridge, just north of Lodi in San Joaquin County. The Woodbridge facility, called The Lodi Vintners Association, is owned by the Rippey Family and has grown to 6 million gallons of capacity since its launch in 1991. Tyson Rippey, son of founder Dennis Rippey, said the family hopes to replicate the Woodbridge model in Sonoma. "We have a fairly large site here in Woodbridge," Tyson told the Index-Tribune, "but we have clients who need more capacity, and of course we'll be looking for new clients as well."

Rippey, who is general manager and vice president of the company, said the family has been looking for a place to expand for some time and was focusing on sites with existing use permits and zoning in place. Rippey admitted the company has been maintaining a low profile - "we've been deliberately flying under the radar" - and said the location off Stage Gulch Road was "the site with the biggest permit we could find." Rippey added that the family is originally from Napa and the Sonoma facility will get them closer to their roots.

He said the site has been prepared, the dirt pads are ready for construction and a building permit was submitted about a month ago. Rippey said he expects foundation work to begin in a week or so, "weather permitting."

The facility will be a complete wine production plant and, Rippey said, "Right out of the gate we'll have all the processing equipment we need. We'll bring in mobile bottling units for this year's crush," but full high-speed bottling lines are in the works. There will also be 52,000 square feet of temperature-controlled warehouse space and the Rippey business plan calls for future expansion up to 3 million gallons of wine production a year. Rippey said the company does not have its own label and has no plans to start one. "We strictly do custom crush," he said. "We have clients of our own who have been pushed out of production facilities to make room for the owners' label. We also don't want to compete in the marketplace with our own clients."