Day one- CDB, RMW, Biagi, & Free Flow

 

 

Day one- April 18th

Clos Du Bois

Our first stop was Clos Du Bois. We arrived in the morning and Miguel Lopez gave us a tour of the winery, Jessica Padron also followed us around the facility.

 

Wine tasking center for visitors:

 

 

Clos Du Bois one and only running line.

 

 

Facility is only so big, orders pretty much produce then get shipped out, there is very little storage space by production line.

 

 

Shipping doc, I was surprised how small of a space CDB is working with for production and shipping. They only had one shipping doc.

 

 

New metrics for continuous improvement. CDB is the only facility currently using the new metric tools to this advanced status. They even have a TV monitor up to show employees or anyone coming in how productive the line is for that current day. These process improvements are supposed to be put in place for all the other warehouses soon.

Beautiful view from shipping doc:

The facilities were so clean. Jessica said even others coming in from different wineries (not all constellation owned) speak to how clean the facility is.

 

 

Oak Barrel room:

 

Testing the barrels:

 

Room where line 2 used to be, until they brought it over to Woodbridge. This line is now going to produce Meiomi. I was amazed on how much space is there that is not being used currently when they are working with such a small space on the other side of the building.

 

Robert Mondavi

 

To Kalon is currently the area of Napa with the highest quality grade of grapes. Robert Mondavi owns the majority of land/grapes in that area. Here we meet with Chris Hartless and Sirirat (Bo) Martin to talk about the Free Flow process. It was nice to talk with both of them about the Free Flow process because Bo has been involved in the process since we acquired Free Flow and Chris has a lot of knowledge in Free Flow samples. After we met Chris and Bo gave us a tour of RMW.

 

 

To Kalon vineyard:

 

Inside Robert Mondavi:

Large oak barrels were made in France.

 

Grape crusher:

 

Barrel room: 

The large oak barrels from the above photos have lines that run down into this barrel room, to fill the small barrels.

 

Production line:

 

Chart out lining the glass production that goes into making the glass bottles:

 

This exhibit showing how corks are made:

 

 

Biagi Bro's warehouse

 

Neil showed us around the warehouse at our products and other companies kegs. The Biagi warehouse was only a 10 minute drive from Free Flow.

Free Flow Wines

 

We had a meeting with Ted, Patrick, Michelle, and Georgia. They showed us how orders are processed on their side. After Patrick showed us the production line.

 

Kegging line:

I was surprised how small it was. The old keg goes in gets cleaned, then filled and comes back out. The kegs actually get filled upside down.

 

 

 

Only storage tanks they have on site:

 

Storage of empty kegs:

 

Old keg line, this is actually how they used to fill each keg. This is now the way they decant each keg also.

 

 After a long day we had some In and Out Burger. Great way to end the long day of touring.

 

Day 2- TRV, LDC, &WB

Day 2- TRV, LDC, WB


TRV

Our first stop of the day was TRV. We walked in and meet with Jimmy Barbour, Tammy Goff, Christina Valenzuela (which I didn't realize was Erica Coronado's sister), and Doug Case who was the one who gave us the tour of the facility. We later had a meeting with all the people above plus Rick Loiacono who is in finance operations. Justin and Natalie discussed the at risk process with them.
 

 

I thought this machine was cool. The little board on the floor on wheels is controlled with a little remote and can be inserted in each row. Its job is to pull pallets that are far back forward.

 

Tetra line:

 

Boxes come in a roll (photo below) and are then put into the machine and it makes the box and fills it all in one step.

 

Machine below scans the bar code on each box:

 

The machine below is used if the line gets backed up. It saves the line staff 3 minutes before it would become backed up.

 

Below is where the caps are glued on. If you look close you can even see the little metal prong (looks like a metal tooth pick) which holds the cap down for a few seconds.

 

Any box that is dented or the machine registers as damaged gets spit out of the line.

 

The packaging machine, making the cardboard box the Tetra's go into.

 

TRV tanks:

 

TRV wetlands:

This is were the reclaimed water goes. I thought it was going to look like a swamp, but it was actually very beautiful. It is a park where the employees can go to have picnics and it is a half mile to mile down the road from the facility.

 

Crushing station:

This is located behind the ponds. Trucks dump grapes here to get crushed. Before the unload the grapes, each truck of grapes is tested to find out the quality of the grapes. That then leads the trucks to different lanes or crushing stations.

 

LDC

 

At LDC we met Ramon, Kelley, Amanda V, Mike Dutton. I spent some time talking about Free Flow with Amanda and Kelley. Then Bill Hicks gave us a tour of the warehouse. After the tour I sat in another at risk meeting with Kelley, Bill, Ramon and Rick (who met us at LDC).

 

 

Opus line:

 

All bottles being hand labeled:

 

All bottles being hand wrapped:

 

Opus inventory at LDC:

 

Casa barrel and lot, this is what the order looks like for someone who orders the barrel and rest of the lot.

 

 

The library- rows of at risk product.

 

After LDC Bill drove us over to Vaz Brothers warehouse quick so we could see the operations at that warehouse before we head out. It is amazing that all the reworks are done my hand. It was also cool that Phil Vaz was around and gave us a quick tour of the warehouse.

Woodbridge

 

Our last tour of the day was at Woodbridge. This facility was huge and very organized. When the trucks arrive they actually go into a parking lot across the street with rows that are numbered and once WB is ready to receive the truck they call the truck over by row number and that trucker goes to the drop off/ crush area and mines up in the row they were assigned across the street.

 

 

Front office/ reception:

Meet Josh Schulze for a tour of the facility.

 

Line 1:

I was amazed at the size of both line 1 and 2 here!

 

Line 1 is to the right and line 2 is all the way to the left.

 

Line 2:

 

Line 3:

This is the line that was removed from CDB and re-built at WB.

 

Line 4:

This line produces the 187 packed wines.

 

TRV Tanks, there concert slabs are actually there in preparation that they might need to add more one day. They built the facility so they would have room to grow.

 

All the tanks have to be the same height because of the cat walk that is set up on top. The tanks can therefore only get wider.

 

Mobile line set up at TRV. I thought it was pretty cool that this line runs out of a tractor trailer.

After the tour we meet with Helen Maxwell and Fred Miller from the QC team. The meeting was mainly to go over the At Risk process, but I was still able to pick up on their processes.

After the meeting with QC I meet with John Foronda to talk about the Free Flow process. It was more so nice just to put a face to a name and see exactly what he has to do go take product on and off QC holds in JDE.

Our last meeting of the day was with Chao, Frank and Barbra A (who just happened to be there). Again it was nice to put a face to the name.