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Trinchero announces expansion plans

Published:  23 July, 2008

By Dawn Cran
The Trinchero family, owners of Californian wine brand Sutter Home and famed for creating white Zinfandel, have announced plans for a new winery, hospitality centre and tasting room.

The company has purchased five hectares (ha) of land for construction of the 22,000 sq ft winery and extra features.

The new winery, which will cost U$18-20 million (around 10 million), is intended to push forward the Trinchero brand, rather than Sutter Home, and will be used primarily for the production of high-end red wine, including the Trinchero Reserve range. The hospitality centre will provide a new base for the company's successful Vine to Dine enterprise, which offers free education to people who work in the on-trade on the particulars of wine tasting and food and wine pairing.

The tasting room will be open to the public for complimentary wine tastings, and a landscaped, central courtyard will link the three buildings. The winery is due to be in action by next autumn, with the other projects on course for 2008.

The venture is part of a new focus on premium wines, and Bob Torres, son of Vera Trinchero Torres and vice-president of the winery, told Harpers: We plan to have a bit of a relaunch to celebrate the new facilities. We're currently looking at new labels and the possibility of creating a new range of wines, which would be one step higher in quality than our reserve wines.

We've always been a big producer but we want to make more of an impact in the higher-end market and really cement our presence in the Napa Valley.'

Sutter Home White Zinfandel grew from a base of 25,000 cases in 1981 to three million cases in 1990. It remains a popular and oft-copied wine style, and the UK is the biggest export market for the Sutter Home brand.

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