At Manzanita Creek Winery, our journey began in 2001 when William and I were about to harvest our first grapes from Dry Creek Valley. We take pride in the fact that our roots are in the Dry Creek Valley, where the one (new) winery dealing with the failing sewage treatment plant in Healdsburg; the system was overwhelmed by “City Wineries” that relied on the antiquated and undersized sewage treatment system. When Manzanita Creek applied for our use permit in June of 2002, we were laughed at by the planning department, and I quote, “Another winery? Here we go again.”  You see, the lease we signed was contingent on  getting a use permit, the reason being was the fact that the building (1441 Grove Street) our home in Healdsburg until the building was sold to a bigger winery in 2023 and we were given 90 days to move our school bus sized equipment… I digress; the building was designed to fit 6 startup wineries; it was permitted and built in the late Nineties before the looming alarms went off, and the City was sued (December 4, 2001) by a “Clean Water Act” citizen lawsuit. So they didn’t need another winery being permitted to exacerbate the situation. We had just moved from San Jose to pursue our dream and open a winery, and we had a lot of experience handling toxic waste from being in the coatings industry and working in all kinds of tank farms, and clean rooms, places like Raychem and Lockheed, Ford Aerospace, AMD, GE; you name it. We ran projects all over the South Bay, and dealt with issues that were much more dangerous to the environment than a food grade production facility. We were confident we could easily figure out handling 200 Tons of grapes.

We proposed to the city engineers that Manzanita Creek could harvest all season, and use only 1,000 gallons of water, and when we were finished, we would flush that same 1,000 gallons into the sewer, after they inspected it of course, and gave the okay; they said we were crazy. I explained that if permitted, we would build a “closed loop” water treatment system and we would take 1,000 gallons of Healdsburg tap water, turn it into pure electronics-grade H2O, and we would be washing our “crush-pad” with that, and then cleaning the water and reusing it the next day. The City agreed, and hired a laboratory to monitor our effluent discharge with a robotic sampling device in our sewer line, and see what was going into their plant. They were baffled by the fact that we weren’t using any water to process 40 tons of grapes. They changed the water meter and checked it sometimes every day, still only minimal use of the bathroom and laboratory sink. Prior to Manzanita Creek Winery, all wineries used thousands and thousands of gallons of water every day to process grapes, and wine. In fact, the sewage plant would regularly turn purple during harvest, and the BOD (biological oxygen demand) from all the sugar was killing their plant. We were never recognized for starting a firestorm in the industry… but we were the very 1st to begin solving the problem. Our commitment to efficiency and material handling, honed through years in the trades, has allowed us to innovate and produce fivefold over other wineries of our size, and to reduce water use by implementing “source reduction” a “Silicon Valley” phrase. We believe that our wines are a true reflection of our God-given ability to make wine, and the fact that the grape growers in Sonoma County are among the best in the world; we aim to share the joy of our craft in every bottle.