Local winery up for sale
Attention Hollywood high-rollers:
The 90-acre Agua Dulce winery in Santa Clarita is on the market with an asking price of $12.8 million, and the property, which is being listed by Partners Trust Commercial brokers Robert Morton and Dario Svidler, is expected to attract high-profile members of L.A.’s entertainment industry. According to the agents representing the seller, Hollywood bigwigs are prime candidates to buy this kind of property, and its location is one of its most attractive features.
“This is the closest winery that you can get to from Los Angeles,” said Svidler. While most people may associate Napa, Santa Barbara and Sonoma with the wine trade, Agua Dulce is just a stone’s throw from Hollywood. “You don’t have to get on a plane or a helicopter to get there,” he said.
A number of celebrities have purchased wineries. Director Francis Ford Coppola, following a long family tradition of winemaking, has been a winegrower since 1975. “The Fifth Element” screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen owns Kamen Estate Wines. Other luminaries, such as actors Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, own wineries for their own personal use.
Adding to Agua Dulce’s celebrity cache is former “Late Night with David Letterman” producer Robert Morton, now a real estate broker, who brought the property to Partners Trust Commercial. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Morton landed the listing through Agua Dulce owner Barry Goldfarb’s wife Donna, whom he knew from college. He sent her a birthday card and she contacted him and offered him and Partners Trust the opportunity to sell the estate.
Goldfarb plans to continue operating two other wineries he owns, one in Paso Robles and the other in Santa Barbara. He said he’s putting the Santa Clarita property on the market to lighten his workload.
The property includes a vineyard that produces six grape varietals, a ranch for livestock, a 4,400-squarefoot home and a 1,100-square-foot guest house. In addition to the 9,300-square-foot winery, the site has a 10,500-squarefoot wine barrel warehouse, $1.15 million in inventory and retail space.
“When I went up there for the first time, it blew me away,” Morton told The Hollywood Reporter