North Bay Business Journal

SANTA ROSA — Wine-bottle distributor Trilogy Glass & Packaging plans to relocate from Petaluma this month to have more space for quick turnaround of local orders and the launch of a new packing service for wineries.

Trilogy signed a five-year lease, with equal-term renewal options, for 13,135 square feet in some of the former Marmot Mountain warehouse space at 975 Corporate Center Parkway in southwest Santa Rosa.

Simons & Brecht Real Estate, which represented property owner Zynobia in the deal, is managing tenant improvements. Trilogy plans to move in mid-June.

When Greg Windisch and Rick Miron started Trilogy in Petaluma in January 2004, they thought they needed to be centrally located on the North Coast. Ample warehouse space was available in Petaluma at the time they leased 3,000 square feet at 1180 Holm Road.

However, Trilogy’s list of customers has grown to 325 in California, Oregon and Washington. The company has 12 employees, including five salespeople.

That will grow by a few positions for the start of a packing service for wineries that need a relatively small order filled in a short period of time. The service will be offered for a premium on top of bottle purchases.

Another reason the company needs more space is to make room for the 5 percent of sales that come from Europe.

“Italian and French manufacturers have a two- to three-month lead time for orders,” Mr. Windisch said.

By comparison, Gallo Glass requires a 30-day notice to stay at top production output.

Locally, Trilogy serves about three-dozen wineries located along highways 12 and 121 from Santa Rosa to Sonoma and over to Napa through the Los Carneros winegrowing area of southern Sonoma and Napa counties. A major customer is Kunde Estate in Kenwood, which handles packaging on contract for several wineries that also buy from Trilogy.

Trilogy’s agent, Niels Von Doepp of NAI BT Commercial, said he searched for buildings of the type needed in Sebastopol and western Santa Rosa, but scarcity of industrial property has made finding such space difficult.

Trilogy’s sales have been growing at 50 percent a year since it opened, reaching the equivalent of nearly 4.5 million 12-bottle cases last year and a projected 5 million this year, according to Mr. Miron.

That represents about a third of the outside sales by its primary bottle supplier, E&J Gallo Winery sibling Gallo Glass Co. in Modesto. Gallo Glass is one of a handful of major North American wine-bottle makers, producing more than 1 billion bottles a year, most of which goes for Gallo brands.

Gallo ships directly to customer wineries from its 1.5 million-square-foot Modesto warehouse.

Trilogy also buys a small percentage of bottles from Indiana-based Saint-Gobain but prefers to add sales via Gallo, Mr. Windisch said. Gallo Glass has a fifth glass furnace set to come online soon at its Modesto plant.

Another Gallo Glass distributor in the Bay Area is Fairfield-based Diablo Valley Packaging, which also carries bottles from Anchor Glass Container and Group.

Mr. Windisch was West Coast technical services representative for Anchor and then joined Diablo in 2002 as account manager of its wine division. He then went to Richmond-based Encore Glass, the main local outlet for bottles from Grupo Vitro in Mexico.

Encore is where he met Mr. Miron, a salesman there for 11 years until they left to form Trilogy.

For more information, call 707-566-9000 or visit www.trilogyglass.net.