North Bay Business Journal

NORTH BAY — Legislation has been introduced that could significantly help grape growers and other farmers in the region utilize an additional resource for securing water during the dry season.

Assembly Bill 1200, introduced by Mark Levine (D-San Rafael) and sponsored by the Sonoma County Water Agency, would establish a pilot project that would permit the agency to study the impacts of using recycled rain water for use in watering crops.

Given continued uncertainties around immigration policy in Washington and Sacramento and the budding of a 2013 crop that could be decent-sized, North Coast winegrape growers are looking for ways to stretch labor farther so they aren’t as short-handed as a number were during the record-volume 2012 season.

Business owners, particularly in the wine industry that makes up a significant proportion of the North Coast economy, need to pay attention to major health care insurance, tax and estate law changes this year to avoid steep noncompliance penalties and mitigate significant tax increases, according to local tax-planning and insurance experts.

Vintners and growers of winegrapes often emphasize the value of vineyard terroir, a French term for the contributions of the distinctiveness of a certain location in wine quality. Yet what’s not often realized is what boosts the prestige of vineyards in one area over those in another also can be a big bonus in tax savings.

BODEGA — Patty Karlin’s Bodega Artisan Cheese for nearly 30 years has helped put the North Coast on the map for handcrafted quality foods, but when faced with mounting costs of keeping her small-scale goat dairy in business, she turned to a startup funder of artisan food startups to take her products to a wider market.

Site preparation for new academic center at College of Marin in Kentfield has begun. …

Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage Community Foundation, the philanthropic arm of one of the largest residential real estate services company in the Bay Area, raised $95,570 for Habitat for Humanity in Northern California. …

Sonoma County Agricultural Commissioner’s Office, in collaboration with the county Department of Health Services and the University of California Cooperative Extension, announced the launch of an online program to allow local gardeners to sell or donate their eligible produce. …

Petaluma-based Emma at Home (emmahome.com), retailer of modern home décor by Emma Gardner, has partnered with International Checkout to handle the retailer’s operational aspects of serving online customers outside the U.S. …

Feb. 2, 2013: The 24th annual Great Sonoma Crab and Wine Fest, presented by the Sonoma County Farm Bureau, was held at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds. The event helps supprt scholarships and agricultural education programs.

NAPA — The value of the 2012 winegrape crop in Napa County increased nearly 55 percent to $656.2 million from 2011, according to the final official tally released today for the record-setting season.

HEALDSBURG — Santa Rosa-based land surveying company Cinquini & Passarino has added a wine focus by merging in Howard Brunner’s 16-year-old surveying business in Healdsburg.

The record-sized winegrape harvest of 2012 hasn’t crushed demand building over the past year for wine producers to lock in fruit supplies and places to turn it into higher-end wines that have been enjoying a resurgence in sales.

SONOMA — The Cline family who make two Sonoma Valley wine brands purchased The Olive Press, an olive mill that produces gourmet oil, food and personal-care products from olives.

The business has its mill and a tasting room in Sonoma and a tasting room at Oxbow Public Market in Napa.

PETALUMA — Hydrofarm Inc. agreed to pay the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency a $316,000 settlement and to stop selling two unregistered pesticides, the agency announced this morning.

Growers are anticipating the 2013 Napa Valley winegrape season will begin with substantial emergence of vines from a winter nap in the last week of March, just ahead of the start of last year’s record crop, according to a major local trade group.

Imagine a year in which the San Francisco Giants don’t look that great, but to everyone’s surprise, they clinch their division, make it to the World Series — and win. Imagine that in the very same year the 49ers look pathetic then somehow get better, win their league and finally make it to the Super Bowl — and almost win. Combine all that baseball and football excitement, and you’d have the runup to the 2012 winegrape harvest Super World Bowl.

Winemakers often associate low yields with higher quality, but it doesn’t always work that way. The bounty of 2012, in contrast to that of 2005, came after two light harvests and when consumer demand was starting to revive. Most wineries were delighted to get the extra volume.

State water-quality regulators this afternoon announced the withdrawal of a proposed conditional waiver program for vineyards in the Napa River and Sonoma Creek watersheds from state-set limits on erosion and plans to regulate vineyard water runoff under more general requirements.

SANTA ROSA — Sonoma County Winegrape Commission found the next leader for the 1,800-plus-member group in its recently hired marketing director, Karissa Kruse.

The herd of beef cattle at Petaluma’s Spring Hill Ranch is now certified by the Alexandria, Va.-based Animal Welfare Approved program. …

Working Solutions, a nonprofit microlender that recently opened an office in San Rafael, recently funded Marin County businesses. …

Three wines produced by students at Santa Rosa Junior College won medals in the 2013 San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition. Shone Farm 2010 pinot noir won a gold medal, while its 2009 syrah and 2011 rosé won a silver and bronze, respectively, in the January competition. …

Keiretsu Forum, a large global private-equity angel investment network, and The Venture Greenhouse at Dominican University of California plan to hold the Green Technology Investment Showcase on April 3 from 1–4:30 p.m. at the early-stage green business accelerator in San Rafael. …

An abandoned elementary school on Main Street in the west Sonoma County’s Monte Rio community will be transformed into a destination where residents and visitors can enjoy a café, hiking trail, a skate park and a community farm. …

NORTH COAST — Many wine industry experts figured the 2012 winegrape harvest was going to be the biggest in several years and refill grower pockets after two smaller crops, but the first official tally of the crop released Friday suggests it was the biggest ever, even crushing the giant 2005 harvest in value and tonnage.

William “Bill” Price III, co-founder of private investment company TPG Group and a financier of North Coast wineries such as Kosta Browne, purchased the 138-acre Gap’s Crown pinot noir and chardonnay vineyard in the Sonoma Coast appellation east of Rohnert Park.

SANTA ROSA — While the 2012 winegrape harvest in Sonoma County appears to have been among the county’s largest ever, the market for grapes continues to be active early in the 2013 buying cycle, yet rising costs and uncertain ability to increase retail prices is crushing wine producer margins, according to industry supply and finance experts at a major seminar.