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Two new wine shippers created in Napa, Windsor

ALEXANDER VALLEY CELLARS LAUNCHES DIRECT SHIPPING; BIAGI, JACKSON IN VIN LUX

WINDSOR and NAPA – Wineries that want more options for selling wine directly to consumers or trade accounts have two new options.

Alexander Valley Cellars, a wine warehousing and transportation company, has launched a direct-to-consumer fulfillment service called AVC Direct in its main warehouse in north Santa Rosa.

Meanwhile in south Napa, the Jackson wine family plus the Biagi wine warehousing and trucking family have formed Vin Lux to store and ship orders for premium and high-end wine to wine shops, restaurants, hotels and other trade accounts statewide.

For Alexander Valley Cellars, the motivation to carve out 5,000 square feet for a pick-and-pack facility in its 120,000-square-foot warehouse was a logical step to fully serve existing customers, according to General Manager Meritt Dahlgren.

“A lot of our storage clients were looking for the service and were having to send wine to outside fulfillment companies,” he said.

In the first month of the service, 35 of the company’s 150 storage clients signed up for AVC Direct. The number of wineries using the service is expected to reach 100 by October. Mr. Dahlgren anticipates the venture will make up a quarter of the company’s business.

Yet the company’s warehousing and transportation business is growing too. In the last six months Alexander Valley Cellars has taken on about 40 new clients, including 220,000 cases for Purple Wine Co. in Graton. The 16-employee company has 250,000 square feet of warehouses holding 1.3 million cases of wine in Healdsburg, Santa Rosa and now Windsor.

The company earlier this month signed a two-year sublease for the 70,000-square-foot former Zephyr Express warehouse in Windsor. Steve Crocker and Phil Garrett of Colliers International represented landlord Henry Wine Group, and Shawn Johnson of Keegan & Coppin/Oncor International represented Alexander Valley Cellars.

Mr. Dahlgren expects his company will need room for a half-million more cases of wine by late summer.

The company has five big rigs and soon-to-be three box trucks for pickup at winery bottling facilities. Alexander Valley Cellars relies on Six88 Solutions of Colorado to handle compliance with state wine shipping laws and uses common carriers GSO Overnight, UPS and FedEx to get wine to consumers.

At the other end of the wine warehousing and logistics scale is Napa-based Biagi Bros. Transportation and Warehousing with 2.6 million square feet of warehouses in Northern and Southern California, Arizona, Texas, Virginia and Florida.

Though a different company from Biagi Bros., Vin Lux is sharing half of a 100,000-square-foot warehouse in south Napa with a Biagi Bros. warehouse. The new company also has warehouses in Southern California, 35 delivery trucks and a staff of 60.

Interestingly, the oft-cited reason vintner Jess Jackson started Regal Wine Co. as a distribution and logistics company under the Jackson Family Wines umbrella was to create competition in markets with few distributors, which in California is Southern Wine & Spirits and Young’s Market. Vin Lux’s first customer is the Regal portfolio of Jackson-owned and outside brands.

Vin Lux is set to take on outside customers by June, according to President Tom Tunt.

The Jacksons and Biagis also are working toward shifting logistics for Jackson’s North Coast brands to a proposed 650,000-square-foot distribution facility in American Canyon.

For more information, visit www.vinluxtransport.com or www

.alexandervalleycellars.com.