Winery Equipment Fabrication for Napa and Sonoma

That is the normal request, not a special one. We need your rack spacing and height, the barrel format, your aisle width, and the make, carriage, and capacity of the lift that will actually use it. Off-the-shelf handlers assume a standard rack and a standard truck; if either of yours is non-standard — and in older cellars one usually is — the catalog unit either does not fit or works badly enough that operators stop using it.

Realistically, November through June, with the hard rule that anything touching the crush pad or the production line must be finished and proven before the first fruit arrives. During crush, from roughly August through October, we stay out of working areas. What we will do during crush is come measure, scope, and plan — that is the best time to see what the actual bottleneck is, and it means engineering can run over the winter instead of starting in February.

Yes, and mostly for access and rigging rather than for the steel itself. Below-grade and cave cellars mean restricted door heights, tight turns, limited crane positioning, ventilation considerations for hot work, and sometimes an approach road the delivery truck cannot use. On the field-verification visit we measure the route in as well as the installation point, so the fabricated assembly is sized to arrive rather than sized only to fit.

It mainly affects hot work and site access. Welding, cutting, and grinding get tighter permitting and sometimes get restricted outright as conditions dry out, evacuation orders can close a site with no notice, and PG&E Public Safety Power Shutoffs can remove site power for a day or more in late summer and fall. We schedule hot work against the season rather than assuming it is always available, and we would rather move a cutting operation indoors or into a different month than argue with a fire authority. Confirm the current requirements for your site with your county fire authority.

Both, and it is one of the reasons this region suits us. The hospitality side is engineered architectural steel — guardrail, ADA rail, deck and balcony structures, decorative and privacy panels, shade sail posts, gates — and it needs stamped drawings and permits because it sits under guests. Our engineers design, draft, and stamp it and pull permits where the jurisdiction requires them, and the budget ranges are published above so you can scope it before asking for a quote.

Yes. Lagunitas in Petaluma and Amy's Kitchen in Santa Rosa are examples of the other side of this region's process manufacturing — named here as market context, not as customers. The technical requirements overlap heavily with winery work: sanitary and washdown design, tank platforms and access, glycol and utility supports, and support steel threaded into a building that was not laid out for the current equipment. The main difference is the calendar, since year-round production means shorter, more frequent windows instead of one long off-season.