Large custom winery near Sonoma to open by harvest

The Rippey family, which operates a large custom winemaking business in San Joaquin County, plans to open a 1 million-gallon-a-year similar winery between Petaluma and Sonoma in time for the winegrape harvest this year.

The family's company, The Vintners Group, started construction this past fall on a winery at 4204 Stage Gulch Road. Originally approved as a 250,000-case-a-year winery with public tasting options, the Rippeys took over the project and reconfigured it for initial production of 500,000 cases annually and no tasting room.

The company has asked the county of Sonoma for permission to produce or store 3 million gallons of wine a year eventually. That would include 600,000 gallons for bottled wine and 2.4 million gallons in bulk storage.

The facility will have 52,000 square feet of climate-controlled storage and be configured for high-speed bottling lines. Likely it will be served by a mobile bottling service the first year of operation, according to Tyson Rippey, vice president and general manager.

Called Carneros Vintners Inc., the Sonoma County business already has letters of intent from prospective clients, according to Mr. Rippey. Some of that could be for bulk wine storage in tanks or for warehousing barrels or cases of wine.

"We're 50 percent committed right away," he said. "Many want to see the buildings up and know who the winemaker will be before signing on."

The fee structure will be finalized in coming weeks after a full-time winemaker is located and the potential equipment lineup, such as cross-flow filtration, is determined.

"We want to be really aggressive with pricing because we want to get more customers in there," Mr. Rippey said. "Especially in this economy, we want to save clients money where we can."

Mr. Rippey's father, Dennis, started Lodi Vintners Inc. in Woodbridge in 1991, and the facility has grown from processing 1 million gallons of wine annually to 6 million gallons. About a dozen clients have much of that capacity spoken for from year to year.

Some of those clients are based in the North Coast and used the 10,000-ton-a-year crush capacity of Lodi Vintners for grapes grown near there for California appellation brands, according to Tyson Rippey. Some have their own facilities but would rather spend money on winemaking and marketing a $15 to $20-a-bottle brand than on a capital project to expand production.

The Vintners Group a year ago had looked at a prospective winery to buy on the Central Coast to establish a custom operation there, but it didn't work out, according to Mr. Rippey.

The general contractor for the project is Commercial Construction Consulting of Reno. Steve Marin Associates of Sebastopol provided civil engineering and permitting assistance, and Ty Fiscus of Graton was the structural engineer.