Bronco Wine Company

Joseph, John and Fred T. Franzia founded the Bronco Wine Company in 1974. They are still the owner/operators of the wineries. Bronco owns ~17,000 hectares of wine grapes. This makes Bronco the largest private grape grower in the world. Bronco owns six wineries in California. One is located in the Napa Valley, one is in the Sonoma Valley, three are in the San Joaquin Valley and one in Madera County. The total storage capacity is about 550,000,000 liters of temperature controlled, stainless steel tanks. Bronco also has about 25,000 oak barrels in temperature and humidity controlled warehouses. Bronco crushes between 325,000 and 440,000 tons of grapes annually. Bronco is ISO 9001 and HACCP certified. The Bronco laboratory is certified by the TTB to do export wine analyses. The majority of the wine is sold in bulk on long term fixed price contracts to other California blenders and bottlers, e.g., Constellation Brands, Fosters Wine Estates, Trinchero Family Wines (Sutter Home), Brown Forman (Fetzer), DIAGIO, Allied Domecq, Kendall Jackson, etc. Bronco also has a large branded wines business. The largest volume is the Charles Shaw brand. Other major brands among the 50 or so that Bronco owns are Forest Glen, ForestVille, and Napa Ridge. The total branded business amounts to about 130,000,000 bottles. Bronco exports amount to about 5% of the total business. The majority of the bulk volume goes to Germany and United Kingdom. The largest branded customers for wines bottled in California are in Germany, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Japan, Korea, and China. Bronco makes vintage dated, varietal, table wines. The dominant varieties are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Pinot Noir and Zinfandel rose. Bronco also makes sparkling wine in the traditional method and in bulk process.