The 140,000-square-foot warehouse serves as the lead pickup point for Hope Family Wines’ global distribution
PASO ROBLES — Hope Family Wines unveiled its new warehouse and bottling line, allowing the winery to grow in the industry. Among the first of its kind in the Paso Robles region, the 140,000-square-foot warehouse now serves as the lead pickup point for Hope Family Wines’ global distribution network. All of the winery’s wines are now produced, bottled, warehoused and shipped from one vertically integrated hub, marking a significant community investment in technology, innovation, job creation, and regional visibility.
“We hope that this helps pave the way for Paso Robles to become more of a distribution pickup point for the nation’stop wholesalers, which would benefit the local wine industry,” said Winemaker/Owner Austin Hope. “We want to be part of a larger local infrastructure that competes with anywhere else in the world of wine.”
Hope explained that, until now, the majority of the winery’s cased goods were transported and stored at a warehouse in the Napa area — a major warehousing hub for distributor pickups. By diverting pickups to the new warehouse in Paso Robles, Hope Family Wines is creating more operational efficiency, reducing its carbon footprint, and investing in the future of Paso Robles. The regional impact of the new warehouse has been immediate. For example, Hope Family Wines recently hosted an executive logistics team from a major national distributor for a tour of the facility and, by extension, a tour of Paso Robles.
“Something like this helps raise awareness at a national level with distributors who help drive our local wine economy,” Hope said. “It creates buy-in for Paso Robles and gives other wineries more runway to do something similar.”
The new 1-million-case capacity warehouse features all-steel construction with insulated metal panel walls and utilizes night air cooling and refrigeration for energy conservation. The new adjacent bottling line, custom designed by Director of Winemaking JC Diefenderfer, processes 200 bottles per minute with a high-speed optical inspection of cork, fill height, glass quality, and label position, as well as numerous automations, including pallet stacking.
“The biggest advances in bottling lines are in the quality control systems, and we have gone all in on those,” Diefenderfer said. “The way we view it, every bottle of our wine ultimately becomes a personal experience for the customer, and we want that experience to be perfect every time — from something critical like fill level to something aesthetic like label alignment. We have the technology to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks.”
The warehouse is also future-proofed for growth in production and technology.
“For example, the 54-foot-high ceiling gives us an opportunity down the line to go vertical with a rack-and-crane system for moving palleted cased goods,” Diefenderfer said. He added that the 14-inch-thick double mat floor was designed to handle the added weight of any such systems.
“The people who call the Central Coast home are the ones who will be helping us with the day-to-day operations of the equipment, software and infrastructure,” said Director of Warehouse & Inventory Abigail Lopez. “In addition to this space being at the forefront of technology, what excites me most is that it will create amazing jobs for Paso Robles.”
Feature Image: An employee operates the new bottling line for Hope Family Wines in Paso Robles. Photos provided by Hope Family Wines
