Sonoma Wine Co. buys Greenfield Winery

Sonoma Wine Co., the Graton-based custom crush wine producer, has bought the Greenfield Winery, a 115,000-square-foot production facility in American Canyon, from its private owners. The deal, reached Feb. 27, was announced Sunday; financial terms were not disclosed.

The new production site adds to Sonoma Wine Co.’s already significant capacity to make wine for custom-crush customers, including crush, fermentation, barrel storage, bottling and packaging in a location close to its customers in southern Napa County, company officials said in a statement released March 1. The American Canyon winery has an estimated capacity of 500,000 to 1 million cases per year, which the new owner hopes to boost to as much as 1.5 million cases, according to Sonoma Wine CEO and founder Derek Benham.

The American Canyon facility “is underutilized right now,” Benham told the San Francisco Business Times, adding that Sonoma Wine Co. was especially interested in acquiring its water-use permit, a valuable commodity in Napa Valley.

Overall, the company will now produce about four million cases of wine annually for 30 clients, including Benham’s own Purple Wine Co. and its Mark West, Avalon and Rock Rabbit brands. Greenfield has produced about 110,000 cases of its Cartlidge & Browne wine at American Canyon, and produced another 200,000 cases for outside clients, according to a report Tuesday in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. “This is way too big for our needs,” Bob Babbe, Greenfield’s national sales manager, told the Santa Rosa paper.

Cartlidge & Browne wine will continue to be produced at the American Canyon winery, but Sonoma Wine Co. did not acquire any wine brands or other assets from the sellers, Benham stressed in a March 3 interview.

Other Sonoma Wine Co. locations include its Graton headquarters, two sites in Santa Rosa, and facilities in Cloverdale, Sebastopol and Alexander Valley.

Between the Sonoma Wine Co. custom-crush/contract business and its own wine brands under the Purple Wine Co. umbrella, Benham said, his wine businesses net about $60 million in annual revenue.