North Bay Business Journal

Wineries pursue pouches for premium brands

As Patrick Krutz, maker of a Sonoma County-based luxury-tier small-scale brand, looks for the best vessel to carry his new music industry-oriented second label into venues where such bands play, he’s considering a single-serving plastic pouch. Meanwhile in Napa Valley, people behind the edgy X Winery, Miracle One Wines and Clif Bar energy snacks have opted for a 1.5-liter spout-equipped bag without the box for new wine ventures.

Packaging take traditional turn in navigating changing consumer tastes

The “giant 47-pound rooster” will still strut its stuff on the HRM Rex Goliath label, but the new design for the top-selling popular-premium-tier wine brand is getting a makeover as part of a trend in wine packaging somewhat away from the fanciful and more toward the traditional.

Legislature approves Sonoma County conjunctive labeling law

SONOMA COUNTY — The California Legislature today unanimously approved a conjunctive-labeling bill that would require wines bearing the names of any of Sonoma County’s 13 designated winegrowing regions to also carry the county name as prominently on the bottle.

On Monday the state Senate voted 36-0 in favor of Assembly Bill 1798, penned by Assemblymembers Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, Wesley Chesbro, D-Arcata, and state Senators Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, and Patricia Wiggins, D-Santa Rosa. The Assembly passed it today with a 74-0 vote. Now, the bill goes to the governor’s desk for signature.

Sonoma County wine labeling effort advances

SONOMA COUNTY — A bid to make the Sonoma County name a standard descriptive feature on all wines made from grapes grown in its winegrowing regions, called conjunctive labeling, reached a significant stage today as grower and winery trade groups reached consensus to back state legislation this year to make it happen.

Leaders of Sonoma County Vintners,

WineBev packs new contracts into larger new Napa facility

NAPA — WineBev Repack Services, the business side of an organization that trains disabled adults with marketable skills, has expanded to a south Napa facility three times as large.

Gabriel Cork America adds screw caps to its offerings

NAPA — The newly established U.S. distributor for the longstanding French natural cork producer The Gabriel Group has added aluminum screw caps to its product portfolio via an importation agreement with one of India’s largest producers of the closures.

Wine closure companies merge certain capsule operations

UKIAH and BENICIA — Rivercap SA of Spain and Sparflex SA of France, which are major producers of beverage packaging, have agreed to merge their capsule operations for the wine and spirits industries, which includes the Rivercap distributorship in Benicia and the Sparflex capsule plant in Ukiah.

American Canyon’s Amcor screw-cap sees surging demand

AMERICAN CANYON — The North Coast impact of a recent multibillion-dollar divestiture of various divisions of Alcan Packaging, which makes the Stelvin line of aluminum screw cap wine closures, is expected to be more production capacity soon at the southern Napa Valley plant.

Options expand for lighter, exotic bottles

Vintners now have more options for lighter-weight glass to save money on purchasing and bottling and exotic bottle shapes for attention-grabbing packaging.

Wine packaging venture takes aim at just-in-time needs

SANTA ROSA — North Coast vintners have a new option for purchasing bottles and packaging.