Sonoma County custom sparkling winery inks deal to expand into charmat production

A Sonoma County company that’s the largest custom producer of sparkling wine in the U.S. plans to be an even bigger player in the bubbly business via a deal with the owner of the trend-setting Sofia brand.

Rack & Riddle Wine Services has inked a multi-year deal with Napa-based Delicato Family Wines to lease the Geyserville facility where the Sofia sparkling wine is produced, bottled and canned. Under the deal, Rack & Riddle will produce Sofia for Delicato while being able to expand the facility to offer clients new options for sparking wine.

The 85,000-square-foot, two-building facility is the part of the Virginia Dare winery that’s on the east side of Highway 101, at 22280 Geyserville Ave. Filmmaker and vintner Francis Ford Coppola purchased it and the landmark ivy-covered west-side winery building a decade ago, when it was the home the Geyser Peak brand.

Three years ago, the Coppola operation transformed the east side of Virginia Dare into a Sofia sparkling winery, employing the méthode charmat process as well as having a canning line and in-line carbonation bottling line.

The charmat method differs from méthode champenoise named after France’s Champagne region and employed in the U.S. by top bubbly bottler Korbel in Sonoma County and by Rack & Riddle.

Put simply, the champenoise method — also called the traditional process — builds bubbles through fermentation of the wine in the bottle, while charmat uses pressure tanks to dissolve the carbon dioxide in the wine until bottling.

Two key differentiators between the methods are price point for the resulting sparkling wine and the time it takes to produce them, according to Mark Garaventa, general manager of Rack & Riddle. Charmat-made bubbly hits the bottle in 45 to 60 days, while champenoise can take one to two years.

“For someone who has more of a price point and timing in mind, it gets them into their sparkling wine products very quickly,” Garaventa said of the charmat process.

Some of Rack & Riddle’s clients and prospects have asked about adding charmat production, Garaventa said.

The charmat method is what vintners in Italy’s Prosecco region use to make its bubbly. Sparkling wine from that region has become a standout in U.S. sales.

Exports to the U.S. grew 5.8% last year over 2021, for the first time overtaking the United Kingdom in volume by value, according to the Prosecco DOC Consortium, the region’s official agency. Italy consumes 120 million bottles of Prosecco, but the U.S. is the top importer, bringing in more than 134 million bottles last year.

Delicato last fall added Italian-made Prosecco to its Francis Ford Coppola Winery “Diamond Collection” brand.

Rack & Riddle ranks second to Korbel in domestic champenoise production, making around 800,000 cases a year. The Sofia facility is said to be the only one employing charmat at scale in coastal Northern California.

In 2021, Delicato acquired the Coppola wine business. The combined company produces about 16 million cases a year, putting it in the top 10 of U.S. vintners.

Delicato CEO Chris Indelicato said he expects the Rack & Riddle deal to be a “successful and long-term relationship.”

"This collaboration allows us to optimize our operations and provides us with the flexibility to continue growing our business,“ Indelicato said in the announcement Wednesday. ”As a client of Rack & Riddle, we believe that our partnership will create value for both parties.“

Rack & Riddle underwent a major upgrade in 2017–2018, fully automating the previously labor-intensive champenoise production process at its two sparkling facilities in Healdsburg and a pre-existing one in Geyserville. It also produces about 1.5 million cases annually of still table wine at a separate Healdsburg custom winery.

The company’s future plans for the Sofia facility include expanding production to accommodate 1 million cases annually. Neither Rack & Riddle nor Delicato would disclose annual production for Sofia, but Garaventa said the facility’s capacity far exceeds what’s currently in use.

Rack & Riddle is picking up about a dozen current workers at the Sofia facility, who will continue to be employed by Delicato, and adding around a half-dozen of its own, Garaventa said.

Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Before coming to the Business Journal in 1999, he wrote for Bay City News Service in San Francisco. Reach him at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.