The Wagner Family, one of Napa Valley’s biggest wine dynasties, has just opened a winery and tasting room in the San Francisco Bay Area’s Suisun (pronounced soo-SOON) Valley, an area which until now has been almost a backwater in California’s wine business. The home of six mom-and-pop-style wineries, Caymus has just opened a massive, state-of-the-art visitor center known as Caymus-Suisun.
Designed by the architecture firm behing Apple Store, the new location, says the San Francisco Chronicle, “almost feels like a resort, with floor-to-ceiling glass walls and a promenade of palm trees.”
The property was an apricot cutting and dehydration plant, but now it can seat 150 customers in the tasting pavilion, has a private tasting area for birthday parties or corporate affairs. Yes, you can buy a bottle of wine.
Chuck Wagner has been a longtime critic of Napa County’s strict rules about how much wine can be produced, what events are allowed (no weddings!), etc.
“Conditions in Napa aren’t conducive to making or bottling wine,” said Chuck Wagner. But neighboring Solano County represented a wild frontier, granting him considerably more freedom. In 2018, he moved the majority of wine production to a facility in Suisun Valley. All Wagner-made wine is now bottled here.
We have the feeling that if Chuck Wagner has his way, in a decade of so, it’s the Suisun Valley people will be talking about, not Napa.