The recent trend of local wineries reducing costs by selling off their prime Healdsburg properties — including Thumbprint, Ketcham, Truett Hurst and Comstock, off the top of my head — continues this winter with the McWilliams family’s Arista Winery and tasting room on Westside Road. The 23-year-old winery sold its beautiful, 36-acre countryside parcel at 7015 Westside Rd. to an L.A.-based wine-and-spirits investment company called Young’s Holdings for just over $25 million in late February, according to the North Bay Business Journal.
But kind of like how the Ketcham team is hoping to keep harvesting wine grapes from vines on the Eastside Road property they’re selling, Arista’s second-generation owners reportedly cut a deal with the buyer of their Westside Road property “to continue producing Arista wines at the facility under an alternating proprietorship.” The Journal reports that the McWilliams family is close with the Underwood family, who owns Young’s Holdings, and already works with one of their marketing and distribution companies, called Wilson Daniels — so this seems like a natural and friendly fit. More details from Wine Spectator magazine:
The only change for Arista is it will lose access to the fruit it had been sourcing from the Arista estate vineyard. The home estate vineyard only accounted for about 10 percent of production, according to McWilliams. The vineyard was planted in 2005; the winery facility was built in 2018.
Young’s Holdings, Inc. is the holding company of the Underwood family, founders of Young’s Market, now part of Republic National Distributing. Young’s Holdings also owns Wilson Daniels, a prominent wine importer and distributor, as well as Infinium Spirits, a leading spirits sales and marketing company.
Starting with the 2025 vintage, Underwood plans to use the Arista estate vineyard for his brand Jonive. (He also plans to change the name of the brand starting with the 2023 vintage.) The project currently produces 1,500 cases annually of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay sourced from the Underwood family’s 15-acre Moon Dust Vineyard in the Sebastopol Hills. Vance Rose is the winemaker.
Arista co-owner Mark McWilliams also posted a video message to Arista followers on the day the news broke. He said: “Effective March 1, we no longer have our tasting room on Westside Road. But don’t worry — we are working now on new ways to see you when you come to Healdsburg. There will be announcements to come.” The Healdsburg Tribune’s sister paper, the North Bay Bohemian, actually ran a nice interview with Mark just days before the sale was announced. Somehow he managed to keep the big news under wraps the whole time! Such a pro…
Note from Simone: This piece originally appeared in the weekly email newsletter I write for the Healdsburg Tribune, called Healdsburg Today. Subscribe here!
