What a Glen Ellen Winery Estate Is Worth When Nobody Needs the Winery

Over the past year, two of Glen Ellen's best-known winery properties have been put up for sale by owners who no longer want to run them. In both cases the main problem is the same: the production building. A 55,000-square-foot facility licensed for 180,000 cases, or a custom-crush operation built to process other people's grapes, used to be what made an estate valuable. In a market where grape demand is shrinking, it is the hardest part of the property to sell.

Anyone pricing a winery estate, vineyard parcel or large Sonoma Valley property this winter should understand how that works. It explains why a famous name on the gate is no guarantee of a strong price, and why the most valuable part of these properties may be the land the building stands on.

Imagery: a building that hasn't made wine in two years

Imagery Estate Winery was started in the 1980s by Joe Benziger of the Benziger winemaking family, according to Patch. The Wine Group bought the property at 14335 Sonoma Highway in 2015, listed it in mid-November 2025 and began seeking offers. The Press Democrat reported that the company had not produced wine there for the previous two years. Christian Koulichkov, a managing director at Hilco Real Estate, which represented the seller, told the paper, "This is a non-core asset for them."

Here is what the property included, as reported in January 2026:

Look at the proportions. Most of the investment sits in the building, the tanks and the case license. Less than a fifth of the land is planted. The Wine Group kept the Imagery brand itself and said it might lease the tasting room back from a new owner or move direct-to-consumer sales to the nearby Benziger estate. In other words, the seller decided the brand was worth keeping and the building was not.

Bids were due on Jan. 21, 2026, with no public asking price. By September, the commercial listing was no longer being advertised, and the agents were directing inquiries to Hilco.

Abbot's Passage and the custom-crush problem

A few miles away on Madrone Road, Abbot's Passage closed its Glen Ellen tasting room on June 28, 2026, six years after opening there. The Bundschu Company had built the site to include a custom-crush facility, where a winery processes grapes for other labels. The company told The Press Democrat that it intends to sell the property and the facility, and gave a market reason: "Demand for custom crush is down because people aren't buying as many grapes."

A custom-crush facility earns money only when other wineries need processing capacity. When those wineries buy fewer grapes, they need less capacity, and the facility's earning power drops even though the building hasn't changed.

The company bought the Madrone Road property in February 2020 for $11.6 million, according to The Press Democrat's coverage of the parent company. The parent, Gundlach Bundschu, operating as Vineburg LLC, filed for Chapter 11 on Sept. 23. It said the Sonoma winery would stay open during the restructuring while it negotiated with a possible new investor. A case summary shows that the Abbot's Passage property is held by a related company, Echo Echo LLC, which had not filed its own Chapter 11 case. As of the court docket entries through Nov. 2, the Vineburg case was in its early administrative stage. The court had approved a financial adviser and given interim permission to use cash collateral.

Why the steel is the hard part to sell

Both properties are going through the same industry-wide adjustment. These are the key numbers:

• Vineyards coming out. California growers removed more than 47,000 vineyard acres between Aug. 1, 2025, and Aug. 1, 2026, nearly 10% of the state's reported acreage, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
• A light 2026 crop. Sonoma County Winegrowers estimated in its Oct. 19 harvest report that the county's 2026 harvest came in about 35% to 40% below average.
• Lower deal pricing. At an AWG Wine Advisors conference in Santa Rosa on May 21, 2026, BMO Capital Markets' Mario Zepponi said top wineries sold for more than 20 times EBITDA at the 2021–22 peak. He put the typical multiple now at about 8 to 10 times, as reported by The Press Democrat.

A production building gets its value from the wine it can make. If fewer grapes are being grown and fewer cases sold, a building sized for the old volumes has fewer buyers who can use all of it. Zepponi said so directly at the same conference:

"It just means that you're going to see a lot of vineyard acres pulled out. Wine production facilities, the bigger they are, the harder they are to sell."

Sonoma-based agricultural appraiser Tony Correia described the land side of the market the same way at that event. "There's lots of sellers, and there's very few buyers," he said, adding that throughout Sonoma County, an owner who has to sell today will get less than in the past. Those comments came in May. The fall data since then shows grapes still being pulled out, not a recovery. Silicon Valley Bank's Rob McMillan told The Press Democrat in September that the bank expects the industry to hit bottom next year or in 2028.

Where the value moves

One group of wineries is doing well in this market. Zepponi said some small luxury wineries selling fewer than 20,000 cases a year through allocation-based, direct-to-consumer models have had record years during the downturn.

Compare that with Imagery's license. A facility licensed for 180,000 cases has nine times the capacity of the largest wineries in the group that is doing well. The kind of buyer who is succeeding right now doesn't need most of that building. Gundlach Bundschu, a well-known 1858 label, produces about 42,000 cases a year, according to its bankruptcy case summary. Even that is less than a quarter of Imagery's licensed capacity.

That changes what a buyer is paying for on a Glen Ellen winery estate this winter. They are paying for the acreage, the frontage on Sonoma Highway or the quiet of Madrone Road, the views and the existing hospitality space. They are also paying for the option of running a small, allocation-scale wine program on part of the site. The industrial capacity is something they will have to find a use for, maintain or work around. Pricing based on what the production plant cost to build assumes a buyer needs the plant.

Zepponi's advice to sellers applies here as well: "If you don't need to be on the market, don't be in the market." For estates that do come to market, Correia's description of many sellers and few buyers sets the terms of the negotiation.

Questions to take to a winery estate showing

When you tour a Sonoma Valley winery or vineyard property this season, these questions are tied to the conditions above:

1. How much of the asking price is building, and how much is land? Ask for the split. Then ask whether your plans for the property actually use the production space.
2. How many acres are planted, and to what? At Imagery, a nearly 20-acre site has just under 4 acres of vines. Planted acres and total acres affect value differently.
3. Who buys the fruit? With Sonoma's 2026 crop 35% to 40% lighter than average and vineyards coming out statewide, find out whether the grapes are under contract or sold year to year.
4. Which entity holds title? At Abbot's Passage, the land is held by Echo Echo LLC, a separate company from the operating business. Ownership structure can affect the timing and terms of a sale.
5. What would the building cost to run at a small scale? A facility sized for heavy production comes with heavy upkeep, whether or not you use the capacity.

This is general market information and not legal, tax or financial advice. Anyone buying a property connected to a bankruptcy or a commercial wine operation should have their own attorney, accountant and lender review it.

If you are weighing a Glen Ellen winery estate, vineyard parcel or large acreage property, or wondering how a buyer in today's market would value the building on your own land, Amanda Shone can walk through the land, the facility and the comparable sales with you, one parcel at a time.