The Perfect Blend: Merging Tradition with Technology at Trinchero Family Estates

In 1948, Italian Immigrants Mario and John Trinchero moved from New York City to Napa Valley to pursue their American dream. The brothers purchased the Sutter Home Winery, which had been out of operation since the end of Prohibition, and laid the foundations for what would become Trinchero Family Estates. By combining tradition and innovation, the business flourished, growing to 50 brands of wine and spirits, including the world’s first White Zinfandel, which became the best-selling wine in the United States in 1987.

Trinchero manufactures about 20 million cases of wine and spirits a year, employs 1,200 people, and sells to 50 countries.

Considering the cloud

As a major player in the $107.5 billion US wine industry, Trinchero strives to stay ahead of technology. Our success relies on a solid tradition of quality and craftsmanship coupled with data, and behind the scenes, our complex IT infrastructure powers everything from production and warehousing to sales.

Trinchero is a long-standing HPE customer. When I joined the company in 2016, we were using HPE 3PAR Storage and HPE Blade Servers, the latter of which would reach end of life in the coming years. At the time, we were under tremendous pressure to move to the cloud, but we didn’t know whether staying on-prem, adopting a hybrid solution, or transitioning entirely to the public cloud was right for us.

We wanted a cost-effective solution that would provide a tightly controlled environment with the performance to run critical systems, including our business intelligence (BI) tools and automated warehouse and production systems. We also needed high-availability infrastructure that provided our sales and retail teams with rapid access to business data. At the same time, we were concerned about the unpredictable costs and complex pricing models of traditional cloud services, which would make budgeting difficult and potentially limit future scalability. We leveraged the HPE GreenLake cloud and HPE Synergy for workload-optimized performance.

A hybrid solution offers the perfect fit

Although we’re a big winery, Trinchero is a mid-size company. We don’t necessarily need to scale quickly, but we grow steadily and must plan accordingly.

After extensively analyzing our choices, we partnered with HPE on a new solution. Off-prem cloud services were all over the place in terms of transaction fees, storage costs, and annual price increases, and going that route had the potential to get expensive quickly. We deployed HPE GreenLake for Compute infrastructure at our primary and backup data centers, ensuring high availability, redundancy, and instant failovers during equipment outages. The HPE GreenLake cloud also offers fully managed, scalable infrastructure at a predictable cost. I can roadmap our technology needs for the next two or three years and present a realistic budget to our management team.

After successfully migrating our servers to HPE GreenLake Compute, we consulted HPE again in 2024, adding HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 disaggregated scale-out storage to our HPE GreenLake contract as our HPE 3PAR Storage reached end of life. The B10000 was a smooth addition to our HPE GreenLake for Compute infrastructure and is managed using the same dashboard, improving performance and enhancing efficiency because we no longer must use separate solutions. 

In vino, veritas: Accelerated processing leads to always-ready data

We saw an immediate improvement in our data processing performance. Every night, we ingest millions of records of national retail data into our data warehouse and merge those with our in-house data using complex ETL processes. With our previous storage setup, consuming and transforming this retail data took six to eight hours. East Coast team members could be two hours into their workday before the data was ready. When we encountered a problem with the data, it took half a day to repeat the process, and our East Coast teams would be on their way home by the time the corrected data was available.

With HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000, the same process can take up to 68% less time. Data is at our East Coast colleagues’ fingertips first thing in the morning. If there is an error, we can repeat the ETL process and still get the data to our sales teams without them losing a day of work. The reduced data processing time also minimizes the risk of delays or errors, which can potentially disrupt daily operations for our sales force.

Improved data ingestion helps everyone make better decisions, move more product, and understand how they’re performing. HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 integrates seamlessly with our data warehouse and Power BI, leading to real-time insights and better outcomes for the sales team and the business.

Streamlined support and more sustainable infrastructure

Implementing HPE GreenLake for Compute and HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 has dramatically reduced the need for manual intervention at our data centers. Our new setup supports various warehouse automation applications, which automate processes such as bottling and storage with minimal human touch. Our HPE environment also supports IoT devices for monitoring conditions in the cellar and the vineyards. We are beginning to explore AI algorithms for grape quality assessment and decision-making, altogether optimizing vineyard and winemaking operations.

The HPE GreenLake cloud is a turnkey solution that includes HPE Managed Services. HPE notifies us of any issues we may have missed, and if they have to send a technician onsite, a replacement part will already be in the mail. Relying on AI-driven issue resolution and 100% data availability have greatly reduced our business risk.

With HPE taking charge of the support, our infrastructure team is freed from low-value tasks like maintaining hardware and managing our data centers. Instead, the team can focus on high-business-value projects and applications that can impact our bottom line, including optimizing critical infrastructure like our automated warehouse and production systems.

Beyond the operational benefits, the customer support from HPE and their partner, PKA Technologies, has been outstanding. I know I can turn to the PKA team, ask them anything, and receive an answer. Both HPE and PKA are constantly improving their solutions and offerings, which has been great to see. Nothing is "set it and forget it," where they deliver something and move on to the next customer. We're seeing constant improvement, and we love hearing about the continued product evolution.

Moving forward with increased agility

HPE GreenLake for Compute and HPE Alletra Storage MP B10000 have given Trinchero an expansive platform for future growth. We envision large-scale projects like ERP upgrades and adopting new enterprise applications. HPE’s partnerships with leading vendors provide extra peace of mind because we know these new solutions will integrate seamlessly with our infrastructure. And I know we can achieve this growth at a predictable cost without sacrificing control.

My infrastructure team is more agile because HPE simplifies and streamlines software and hardware management. If we need a patch, HPE will apply it. If we need a part, HPE will ship it. Instead of worrying about routine tasks and emergency repairs, our priority is keeping the company competitive by getting business intelligence to our teams faster and optimizing our IT resources.

Embracing hybrid infrastructure-as-a-service has positioned Trinchero Family Estates to balance tradition and innovation, control costs, maintain operational excellence, advance our sustainability initiatives, and build a tomorrow with the same spirit that’s sustained us for generations.