Sebastopol company launches mobile wine tank service

[caption id="attachment_101116" align="aligncenter" width="518"] Winesecrets founder and President Eric Dahlberg with "Rapid Response" tanks in the Sebastopol facility (credit: Jeff Quackenbush)[/caption]

SEBASTOPOL -- Like a number of North Coast vintners in recent years, Dennis Patton was in a crunch this year for wine tank storage at the three Mendocino County custom processors his negociant business uses. Then harvest came a month early, deliveries of bottled wine to a major retailer client were delayed, and he suddenly was caught without 100,000 gallons of desperately needed space.

A wine broker pointed him to Winesecrets (707-824-2022, winesecrets.com), a Sebastopol-based company that specializes in solving winemaking problems and recently launched a "Rapid Response Tank Storage" service. Over 48 hours, a stream of big-rigs with flatbed trailers delivered 355,000 gallons worth in 56 nearly truck-sized insulated beverage tanks. A crane from Daniel Steel & Machine of Ukiah hoisted them into position, filling a parking lot at Vintage Wine Estate's Hopland winery, where Mr. Patton's DnA Vineyards is a customer.

"My goose would have been cooked if I hadn't had this," said Mr. Patton, the winemaking part of DnA. His wife, Andrea Silverstein, handles marketing and sales.

DnA leased eight of the 6,340-gallon tanks, and Vintage Wine Estates is using the other 42. They received the bulk of the 69 tanks placed around the region since the service started in July, and Winesecrets has seven inside its 43,000-square-foot Sebastopol facility.

The cost for leasing the tanks starts at $1,200 a month for glycol-ready tanks, based on a minimum three-month commitment, and $1,600 for tanks with built-in refrigeration. Users pay to get the tanks from the port to their property, including port fees and renting a truck and a crane crew with a certified rigger.

[caption id="attachment_101117" align="alignleft" width="394"] Fifty-six mobile tanks were delivered to Vintage Wine Estates' Hopland winery over 48 hours, providing 355,000 gallons of storage. (credit: Winesecrets)[/caption]

Even with all that, Mr. Patton said he found the storage cost less than what DnA had to pay at the last minute for a couple of tanks at a local winery, and the ability to move the tanks in and out as situations change is attractive.

"I can't just put (the wine) in baggies," he said, with a chuckle. "That's my inventory to work from for the next year."

DnA has 1,000--1,200 tons of grapes crushed for its own brands and another 1,400--1,500 tons for brands produced for clients such as specialty grocer Trader Joe's and Wine & Spirits Guild. DnA had launched the TBD brand initially for Trader Joe's in 2006, and now is working to get seven labels in the retailer's stores by the holidays under the chain's VinTJs brand.

The record 2012 and 2013 North Coast harvests and reduced capital investment just after the Great Recession contributed to a winery capacity crisis -- what some called "tank lock" --  in which vintners couldn't get enough wine from previous out of existing storage to take in juice from the next harvest. Though local vintners have been buying permanent tanks as soon as they come available, Mr. Patton and others have been hearing manufacturers quote lead times of up to a year -- or longer.

[caption id="attachment_101118" align="alignright" width="320"] Winesecrets opened the roof of its Sebastopol facility to put seven tanks inside. (credit: Winesecrets)[/caption]

Winesecrets started in 2003 to offer wine treatments, starting with the STARS system for cold wine stabilization, and then went on to offer filtration and alcohol adjustment, and the permits needed for the latter led to offering storage of wine. The crescendo of client calls for more capacity in 2012 led founder Eric Dahlberg to start scouting for intermodal tanks -- designed for truck, train and transoceanic transport -- but suitable pickings that year and the next were scant, he said.

"It's an excellent use of fixed capital, especially to get wine finished and out of the tanks in time for the next vintage," he said.

Early this year while visiting a New Zealand winery, Mr. Dahlberg saw insulated, refrigerated tanks, commonly used to keep milk and juice unspoiled for weeks in transit, instead used as overflow wine storage.

By July of this year, customer calls for last-minute capacity began again in earnest as harvest began weeks earlier than normal. A manufacturer of the insulated tanks Mr. Dahlgren saw said the earliest tanks could be shipped to the North Coast was November, so he started driving around the docks at the Port of Oakland looking for someone with them. That led the company to a local depot for AsepTrans.

The Florida-based company makes tanks designed with steel cages and able to be stacked nine high on ships. However, the need to continually clean the tanks may limit such stacking without adding a service module in between, Mr. Gribben said.

The tanks can keep the liquid inside chilled by on-board chiller or connections to a facility's glycol refrigeration system. The tanks also have connections for adjusting the pressure of inert, heavier-than-air gasses pumped into the airspace between the wine and top of the tank to prevent oxidation. With foam and foil insulation between the inner and outer walls of the tank, the vessel is designed to keep liquid cool for long periods. Some of the tanks at the Hopland winery only warmed up a degree or two after two weeks outside in direct sunlight, Mr. Patton said.

In a deal with AsepTrans, Winesecrets offers the tanks in six-month, year, two-year and five-year leases. There are 120 tanks immediately available, and more can be brought in. Currently, the tanks can get to a winery location as quickly as five working days from the time of order.

Outside harvest, other potential uses for the tanks include temporary capacity for a new winery to take in its first crush if tanks aren't ready, extra storage for a proof-of-concept wine program and small wineries needing short-term storage to finalize a blend. A second phase of the marketing of the tanks could be to move bulk wine from seller to buyer in the truck-sized increments it's often sold in, particularly as a replacement to plastic bladders in conventional oceangoing shipping containers.

"There are year-round uses for these things," said Michael Gribben, director of operations since August.

He joined the company in August as the company was transitioning to more structured operations. He had overseen production and operations oversight roles at Jackson Wine Estates, its Journey Bottling Company venture, Winery Exchange and, most recently, Beringer Vineyards over the past dozen years. Now, Mr. Dahlberg is able to turn to Mr. Gribben to analyze and implement new-business ideas as well as standardize operating procedures as the company grows.

Winesecrets assumed operations of the former Vinovation facility in Sebastopol in mid-2008, when Winesecrets acquired Vinovation's reverse-osmosis filtration and alcohol-adjustment assets. Removing the taint from wildfires in the North Coast in 2009 drew attention to the company's targeted-filtration services, which now make up the bulk of revenue for the 18-employee company.

But from the alcohol-adjustment business -- up or down to match flavor profiles, stay under tax thresholds or avoid label reprinting -- has developed into a business for selling high-proof grape-derived alcohol as a certified wine spirit addition that bonded producers can buy to disinfect filler valves and spray fittings on bottling lines as a higher-strength alternative to buying cheap vodka bottles at retail.

The company is still mobile and getting more so. In addition to trailer-mounted cross-flow filtration units, Winesecrets recently obtained a mobile STS centrifuge for finer control of clarifying wine than conventional units that have come from the dairy industry.

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