With glasses of sparkling wine raised in a toast, a crowd of Napa vintners and community members cheered as a large excavator tore into the defunct former Napa Sanitation District pump station in Oakville on May 27.
The gathering and toast was to celebrate the groundbreaking on what will be the new home of the Napa Valley Grapegrowers (NVG), the Patrick Foley Center for Grape Growing & Farmworker Education.

“This project is the product of dreamers who refuse to let the idea falter,” NVG executive director Caleb Mosley told the crowd as he recognized the many collaborators behind the effort. Donation included a lead $3 million gift from the Foley Family Charitable Foundation that secured naming rights for the center. The education center’s name honors Patrick Foley, son of vintner Bill Foley and a winemaker, who died in 2018 at age 31.
“Being able to name it after Patrick is especially meaningful,” said Courtney Foley, Patrick’s sister. “He was heavily invested in the significant developmental and educational opportunities that the Grapegrowers and Farmworkers Foundation offers.”
Other major donors include Andy and Betty Beckstoffer, the Moulds family, Trinchero Family Estates, and Mark Pulido and Donna Walker. There is also a one-acre parcel adjacent to the Beckstoffer To Kalon vineyard that is part of the property and will serve as a demonstration vineyard for future NVG projects...

The Napa Valley Grapegrowers (NVG) gathered just off St. Helena Highway in Oakville on May 27 for the official groundbreaking of the Patrick Foley Center for Grapegrowing and Farmworker Education, the organization’s first permanent home and community hub for training and professional growth in the wine industry.
The celebration included a champagne toast to the team of donors and others who’ve helped raise capital (over $9.5 million) for the project, and the kick off to the site’s demolition with a Hitachi backhoe tearing into part of a building on the 2.2-acre property.
“We’re not simply breaking ground on a building. We are breaking ground on a legacy. A legacy built by people who grow the grapes that make this valley famous, and carried forward by generations of growers who will shape the next chapter of this industry,” Caleb Mosley, executive director of NVG, shared during the event. 
Once completed, the center—outfitted with a design honoring the site’s history as the Oakville train station—will feature hands-on training space, a demonstration vineyard with 0.9 acres planted to vine, classroom and community meeting facilities...