North Bay Business Journal

Agavé Garden (agavegarden.com) is not grape wine, but it is fermented in local wine country and shipped in wine bottles. It’s not distilled like tequila, but it is made from organic syrup of Agavé tequilana weber, or blue agave. This “fine agavé wine” is the work of custom vintner Owl Ridge Wine Services of Sebastopol. …

Large-scale custom winemaking company The Vintners Group, which operates Carneros Vintners, purchased a 600,000-gallon winery it had been renting from the VinREIT division of Entertainment Properties Trust since the middle of last year. …

Karissa Kruse, who has been marketing director for Sonoma County Winegrape Commission since August and instrumental in the rollout of the Sonoma County branding campaign, is set be the 1,800-plus-member organization’s next president on May 1. She replaces Nick Frey. …

The anticipated Kendall-Jackson bistro and tasting lounge is coming to the Healdsburg plaza area around the end of this month. The 55-seat restaurant, called Partake by K-J (partakebykj.com), is set to open March 25 at 241 Healdsburg Ave. …

La Follette Wines (lafollettewines.com), launched in 2010 by Tandem creator Greg La Follette, is set to open a tasting room with private and public tasting events March 15–17 at The Barlow industrial-retail redevelopment in Sebastopol. …

The 17th annual Premiere Napa Valley charity auction by Napa Valley Vintners in late February took in $3.04 million, nearly matching last year’s record. …

A total of $483,500 in proceeds from the 2012 Sonoma Wine Country Weekend charity food and wine events. …

A 9-liter bottle of 2010 Williams Selyem Westside Road Neighbors pinot noir was auctioned for a Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo record $205,000. …

Nearly a year after a Napa-based custom vintner announced its expansion into the former Buena Vista winery in Los Carneros winegrowing region straddling Sonoma and Napa counties, another custom winemaking operation today announced it is doing the same.

GEYSERVILLE — M. Draxton Inc. is one of the options North Coast winegrape growers have for extending the marketability of their crops in case they have unsold grapes at harvest.

Tyson Rippey, Vice president and general manager, The Vintners Group
3750 E. Woodbridge Rd., Acampo 95220; 707-939-9349; www.carnerosvintners.com; www.lodivintners.com

NAPA – Custom winery Bin to Bottle has formalized an arrangement with Crushpad of San Francisco to provide crush-to-consumer services to small-production vintners.

HOPLAND – Custom vintner RB Wine Associates is coming off a $7 million expansion and upgrade that allowed a major sparkling-wine label to move in for harvest this year, one of a handful of sizable contract winemaking facility projects in progress around the North Coast.