North Bay Business Journal

Novato-based Winery Exchange continues to expand beyond its roots as a worldwide creator of wine, beer and spirits brands with the acquisition of a portfolio of certified-organic and sulfite-undetectable wine brands, led by Our Daily Red and Orleans Hill, from Nevada County Wine Guild. …

St. Helena-based Trinchero Family Estates on Wednesday announced a strategic alliance with vintners Charles Smith of Walla Walla, Wash., and Charles Bieler of New York City to manage sales, distribution and marketing of their joint-venture brand Charles & Charles. …

Safe Harbor Wine Storage (707-252-9690, safeharborwines.com), a bulk cellaring business opened five years ago by two notable Napa Valley winemakers and two owners of Sausalito-based oak stave insert maker StaVin, has outgrown its 50,000-square-foot south Napa winery and is moving forward with plans to expand down the street. …

Because the original comment period for the proposed vineyard waiver program for rainwater runoff in the Napa River and Sonoma Creek watersheds ran through the winter holidays, the State Water Resources Control Board extended the comment deadline and rescheduled the public hearing. …

DH Wine Compliance of Windsor this month launched Wine Compliance Academy. …

After two decades as president of Lake County Winegrape Commission, Shannon Gunier left the organization this month. … To replace Ms. Gunier, the board of the Lakeport-based trade group chose Debra Sommerfield from more than 30 applicants. …

After acquiring the Echelon Vineyards brand from Diageo Chateau & Estates Wines early this year, Novato-based Winery Exchange has revamped the brand inside the bottle and out. … Boisset Family Estates, whose U.S. portfolio of brands includes DeLoach, Buena Vista and Raymond, formed a “strategic partnership” with 75,000-case-a-year Lockwood Vineyard in Monterey County. … Part of the makeover of the Main Street Exchange building at 1040 Main St. in downtown Napa, are tenant improvements to accommodate 22 employees of Huneeus Vintners. The Huneeus family wine company plans to relocate accounting, sales administration and marketing personnel from the Quintessa winery in St. Helena to 5,800 square feet in Napa around the beginning of next year … What started as a novel packaging idea to distinguish their 400-case-a-year Rua wine brand has turned into a business in its own right for Windsor-based wine sales and marketing veterans Máire Murphy and her husband, Walt Averill. In the past year since launching CapaBunga — a surfer-esque play on “capsule” and wine barrel “bung” — they’ve sold 117,000 of the stretchable food-grade silicone bottleneck capsules. … Tony Linegar, 46, Mendocino County agricultural commissioner and sealer of weights and measures for nearly three years, will move to that role in Sonoma County on Jan. 3. The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors approved his appointment Tuesday. … With harvest mostly over in the North Coast, it’s the start of wine business conference season.