North Bay Business Journal

GEYSERVILLE — Francis Ford Coppola Winery today confirmed it purchased the Geyser Peak winery facility and surrounding vines in Sonoma County’s Alexander Valley winegrowing region to expand wine production.

SONOMA COUNTY — Sonoma-based Foley Family Wines has reached a deal to acquire Lancaster Vineyards, adding two brands to Bill Foley’s now million-plus-case-a-year portfolio and key access to cabernet sauvignon grapes from Sonoma County’s Alexander Valley.

HEALDSBURG — Silver Oak Cellars of Oakville has purchased Sausal Vineyard & Winery started nearly four decades ago in Sonoma County’s Alexander Valley winegrape region north of Healdsburg.

HEALDSBURG — Napa-based Crimson Wine Group, a portfolio of several premium red wine brands owned by a New York investment company with $9.3 billion in assets, has acquired zinfandel-focused Seghesio Vineyards and most of the Seghesio family’s 300 acres of vines in Sonoma County’s Alexander Valley for an undisclosed sum.

ALEXANDER VALLEY – Sonoma County planning officials will have to decide starting this month whether a proposal to commercially skim gravel bars in several miles of the Russian River through Alexander Valley would be worth it for increasing the supply of choice aggregate, protecting acres of riverside vineyards and a key bridge from erosion and opening creeks to migration of protected fish.

What follows are brief introductions to the top leaders of independently owned wine companies from the Business Journal’s Independently Owned Wineries list, published in March, and the Wine Companies list, published in this issue.