(Wines&Vines) - This year Trinchero Family Estates is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the inaugural release of its white Zinfandel wine.

The pink, slightly sweet wine was pretty much lightning in a bottle for the once-small, family-owned winery that had just been getting by since brothers John and Mario Trinchero bought Sutter Home Winery in 1948.

Since its almost instant success, the Trincheros have sold $6 billion worth of white Zinfandel and still sell between 3 million and 3.5 million cases of the wine per year, said the company’s president and CEO Bob Torkelson, who was the keynote speaker at the July 23 summer conference of the California Association of Winegrape Growers in Napa.

Torkelson has been at the helm of the company, which is still owned by the Trinchero family, since 2004. After starting his career at E. & J. Gallo Winery, Torkelson worked for Lovotti Bros. Distributing Co. in Sacramento for seven years before joining Trinchero as national sales manager in 2000. He was promoted to the post of senior vice president of sales and global sales manager in 2001.

Today, Trinchero has more than 35 California wine brands, and its products are sold in 50 nations. The company is No. 5 on Wine Business Monthly’s most recent top 30 wine producers list by U.S. case sales. Trinchero sold 18.8 million cases in 2014, coming in behind No. 4 Bronco Wine Co. with 20 million and 4.5 million more than Treasury Wine Estates at No. 6.

Torkelson said the company currently employs 1,800 people, of which 1,600 are in California. About a quarter of all Trinchero’s workers have been with the company for more than 20 years. “We have a stable, long-term group of employees,” he said.

Such long-term employees are one of the “five pillars” that have supported Trinchero’s success. Other pillars are committed ownership—a dozen members of the Trinchero family spanning three generations still work for the firm—partnerships with distributors, innovation and infrastructure.

Massive new Lodi facility

Torkelson said the company is poised to bring a major new piece of infrastructure fully online soon. Its massive Westside winemaking facility near Lodi, Calif., will soon be fully operational. The 850,000-square-foot facility can process 100,000 tons of grapes, and three high-speed bottling lines can accommodate all of Trinchero’s various bottle sizes and package types. The new facility also brings the company’s entire Sutter Home production to one location, eliminating thousands of truck trips up and down congested Highway 29 in the heart of Napa Valley.

The warehouse is a modern automated facility with 90-foot-high ceilings that can accommodate nine high pallet stacks for a total of 72,000 pallets (or 4 million cases of wine).