Sonoma Wine Company Promotes Mark Castaldi to General Manager of Its Growing American Canyon Facility

Graton, CA - March 22, 2011: Sonoma Wine Company (SWC),the dynamic and fast-growing custom winery services company, announced today the promotion of Mark Castaldi to General Manager of their American Canyon facility. SWC will be implementing a significant expansion program at the America Canyon facility over the next few months to expand both bottling and crush capacities. This expansion required the leadership and oversight of someone capable of providing strategic direction and executing productivity and process improvements. Castaldi, with over 25 years of experience in the food, beverage, and wine industries and a proven tenure of senior level executive management positions, was a natural choice for the position.

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Castaldi, who holds a Masters Degree in Agricultural Economics, has prior experience in the food industry that includes Strategic Planning, Financial Analysis, and Operations Analysis with several multi-national and globally branded packaged food companies. For the past 11 years, he has held several senior level Operations Management positions which have included General Manager, Vice President of Operations, and COO within the wine industry. His tenure in the industry has included the following companies: Beringer Wine Estates, Kendall-Jackson Wine Estates, Icon Estates, and most recently Sonoma Wine Company. In addition, he’s provided private consulting services for several large winery clients.

He has already proven himself to be a dynamic addition to the SWC team. His current role at SWC has been focused on providing overall strategic direction for the company with regards to facility utilization, fee structure/client relationships, services provided, and new business ventures. As General Manager of SWC’s American Canyon custom crush, bottling, and storage facility Castaldi will have direct supervisory responsibility over day-to-day operations. The expansion plans that he will directly manage include the addition of 500,000 additional gallons of stainless steel bulk wine storage capacity, amplification of barrel storage and processing capabilities, doubled crush capacity, increased bottling volume, and a partnership with Winesecrets to offer wine filtration services. The creation of this new partnership with Winesecrets further enhances SWC’s portfolio of services that they are able to offer to clients at one centralized location.

This announcement and plans for growth follows a period of rapid expansion for SWC. This past November they were internationally recognized for the installation of a revolutionary solar cogeneration system—further evidence of their commitment to leadership in sustainability within the wine industry. Just this month, they were awarded ISO 22000 certification at the American Canyon facility, the prestigious international standard of food safety in the ISO quality management series, becoming the first US winery to ever do so.