Afternoon Brief, October 3rd

Napa Valley Finds Itself between a Rock and a Hard Place: Napa Valley wineries confront a growing set of challenges, including regulatory shifts, evolving tourist preferences and market volatility...

Afternoon Brief, August 25th

Sonoma County Winegrowers Team Up with the San Francisco Giants to Feature Local Wines: The partnership will feature a “Sonoma in the City” cloud club theme & new wine region video series...

Arbitration Agreements May Be Your Friend Overview: On June 15, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an 8-1 decision on the Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana case.  As anticipated, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of forcing employees to bring claims against their employers on an individual basis and in arbitration. The decision represents a rare win for employers and provides clear support for employers to adopt an Arbitration Agreement for their employees. What Should Your Company Do? If you have 100 or more employees or are otherwise concerned about group-wide claims under the Private Attorney General Act (“PAGA”) or via class action, we suggest you contact our office to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of adopting an employee Arbitration Agreement.  Having a carefully crafted Arbitration Agreement can save your company thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars.  However, there are always considerations to be made when adopting such a po

Santa Rosa, CA: TCW Equipment is pleased to announce its partnership with PROTEC equipment, the unequivocal leader in optical sorting technology. Protec produces innovative products for the food, wine-growing, seafood and agricultural sectors. This alliance was established to collaborate on improving the U.S. based representation and service to the wine industry for PROTEC’s line of optical products. PROTEC’s optical sorters utilize entirely novel computer vision methods not available in any other machine on the market. The result is fruit that is more cleanly and effectively processed than with competitive optical sorters. In truth, there is no competition.  Optical sorting provides incredible benefits to winemakers that can't be matched with manual sorting. While some traditionalists initially sniffed at the concept of computers sorting grapes, those same purists have been won over the huge advantages optical sorting offers: greatly reduced labor costs, increased