Sonoma Wine Country Weekend breaks with Sonoma Valley vintners group

The Sonoma Valley Vintners & Growers Alliance will give up its role in Sonoma Wine Country Weekend, the much-loved and largest wine event of the year.

Instead, the Sonoma County Vintners trade group will assume full control of all the events of the three-day weekend.

The Sonoma Valley group’s contract will end in 2019.

Meanwhile, the Sonoma Valley group will launch a new event, Signature Sonoma Valley, to be held this year on April 7-8. The fundraising event will not include an auction.

Officials with both organizations said the decision was a natural evolution for the three-day event, which attracts more than 6,000 people, especially as its charitable fundraising has dramatically increased in recent years.

Last year the event’s wine auction, held on its final day, raised $4.6 million for various local charities.

“Wine Country Weekend has grown tremendously,” said Jean Arnold Sessions, executive director of the Sonoma County Vintners.

“That requires full-time resources.”

Last month, Kelin Backman was brought in as managing director for Sonoma Wine Country Weekend.

A Petaluma resident, Backman previously developed the Rivertown Revival event for the Friends of the Petaluma River and served as fundraising director and events producer for Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael.

The two groups have been working together since 2008, when the Sonoma County Vintners merged its Taste of Sonoma wine tasting event with Sonoma Valley’s Harvest Wine Auction to create three days of festivities held over Labor Day weekend.

After more than two years of discussion, the boards of both organizations agreed it made more sense to house the event’s full-time staff in the Sonoma County Vintners’ offices to handle its growth, while the Sonoma Valley group can step back to focus more on promoting its region’s wines and grapes.

Maureen Cottingham, executive director of the Sonoma Valley Vintners & Growers Alliance, said her staff was spending as much as 75 percent of their time on the event.

It will now gradually return to greater promotion of its 110 member wineries and 140 growers.

The change in sponsorship is just one of many changes coming for the signature event, as backers set a goal to raise as much as $10 million from the auction alone by 2020.

The weekend of events will be held this year on Sept. 15-16 and the auction will be housed at a new location: La Crema Estate at Saralee’s Vineyard in Windsor.

Sessions said there also will be changes coming to Taste of Sonoma, which has been held at Gallo’s MacMurray Estate Vineyards in Healdsburg for 12 years, that she will announce on Feb. 1 at her group’s annual meeting.

Sonoma Wine Country Weekend has traditionally kicked off with the Starlight Dinner at Francis Ford Coppola Winery in Geyserville. This year the kickoff will feature smaller events instead, spread out at wineries across the county.

The vintners have retained Visa Inc. as the weekend’s main sponsor for this year, Sessions added.

Sessions said she did notice the new Sonoma Valley event will result in a jam-packed April for the industry - the Sonoma County Barrel Auction will be held on April 21 and Passport to Dry Creek Valley will be held on April 28-29.

Cottingham said the new event, which will aim to attract about 200 attendees in its first year, will be able to differentiate itself from the other area winery events as well as being a manageable size for the community.

“We feel it’s small enough and special enough and intimate enough” to stand out, she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Bill Swindell at 521-5223 or bill.swindell@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @BillSwindell.