Share
APAC #2 Report
APAC #2 Report
Bill Hocker | Apr 27, 2015 on: APAC
NVR: Ag protection committee looks at winery parcel size
One thing was clear after the 2nd meeting of the Agricultural Protection Advisory Committee. A 17 member body, each with very different agendas and experience levels will need some time to sort things out and come up with consensus recommendations to the Planning Commission by the Sept 2nd deadline.
After a morning of trying to keep things focused on an exploration of the interrelated issues of minimum property size for a winery, estate grape requirement and loss of vineyard acres to winery development, Chairman Ted Hall requested that a proposal on those issues from each participant and the groups they represent be made at the new meeting on May 11th.
Dir. Morrison has made every effort to craft these meetings in a structured way, as a judge might with jury deliberations, but individual members, and the public who were allowed to participate, each had their own positions to stake out and this was the first opportunity to do so. Despite the wealth of statistics that Dir. Morrison has been able to marshall in the last couple of months, what they all mean and whether they are enough is not very clear at this point and Mr. Hall warned the committee cannot expect all questions to be answered with data.
The preset agenda for this and the next two meetings seemed to preclude one question that should be resolved before all of the others: Sup. Luce's question: Is there enough capacity already to process all of the napa grape crop and is there a reason to keep building wineries in Napa County. Morrison gave his answer at the Mar 10th meeting. Some 18 mil gallons of wine are required by use permit since 1990 to be made from napa grapes. The current crop of napa grapes will produce about 28 mil gallons of wine. His answer: no, he can still approve 192 50,000 gal wineries (or 500 more 20,000 gal wineries) before capacity is reached. But that assumption means that eventually no Napa grapes will be processed by pre-WDO wineries, or by city wineries or by the airport wineries, which together currently produce 81% of the wine in the county. It is a questionable assumption and one that needs debate. Vintner Bruce Phillips and NFB rep Lucio Perez challenged that assumption in their discussion without getting much support, I felt.
Dir. Morrison also gave the Tesla defense for continuing to approve wineries. If the big three are able to supply all of the cars necessary for the American market why allow a startup like Tesla to happen: disruption is healthy. The question now is only how disruptive those new wineries should be - to us all.
One (5th generation) property owner described how she would be unable to develop their dream winery if the minimum property size went to 40 acres. Another couple saw their dream business as exposing tourists to the authentic experience of small farm life. Stanley Boyd of Visit Napa Valley supported them saying that the small winery owners provided the "authentic" winery experience that his visitors wanted. Tourism and "authenticity" are, of course, mutually exclusive, but there does need to be a place for the winery startup - perhaps a family winery that means what it says. Just one of many solutions that the committee will probably not explore.
Overall this meeting was quite a disappointment. It appears that APAC may only be concerned with tweaks to the numbers in the current WDO, and not about more radical solutions or the larger implications of continued event center development. At best there may be a very modest change in the number of event centers being proposed in the future. I could be wrong, of course.
NVR: Ag protection committee looks at winery parcel size
One thing was clear after the 2nd meeting of the Agricultural Protection Advisory Committee. A 17 member body, each with very different agendas and experience levels will need some time to sort things out and come up with consensus recommendations to the Planning Commission by the Sept 2nd deadline.
After a morning of trying to keep things focused on an exploration of the interrelated issues of minimum property size for a winery, estate grape requirement and loss of vineyard acres to winery development, Chairman Ted Hall requested that a proposal on those issues from each participant and the groups they represent be made at the new meeting on May 11th.
Dir. Morrison has made every effort to craft these meetings in a structured way, as a judge might with jury deliberations, but individual members, and the public who were allowed to participate, each had their own positions to stake out and this was the first opportunity to do so. Despite the wealth of statistics that Dir. Morrison has been able to marshall in the last couple of months, what they all mean and whether they are enough is not very clear at this point and Mr. Hall warned the committee cannot expect all questions to be answered with data.
The preset agenda for this and the next two meetings seemed to preclude one question that should be resolved before all of the others: Sup. Luce's question: Is there enough capacity already to process all of the napa grape crop and is there a reason to keep building wineries in Napa County. Morrison gave his answer at the Mar 10th meeting. Some 18 mil gallons of wine are required by use permit since 1990 to be made from napa grapes. The current crop of napa grapes will produce about 28 mil gallons of wine. His answer: no, he can still approve 192 50,000 gal wineries (or 500 more 20,000 gal wineries) before capacity is reached. But that assumption means that eventually no Napa grapes will be processed by pre-WDO wineries, or by city wineries or by the airport wineries, which together currently produce 81% of the wine in the county. It is a questionable assumption and one that needs debate. Vintner Bruce Phillips and NFB rep Lucio Perez challenged that assumption in their discussion without getting much support, I felt.
Dir. Morrison also gave the Tesla defense for continuing to approve wineries. If the big three are able to supply all of the cars necessary for the American market why allow a startup like Tesla to happen: disruption is healthy. The question now is only how disruptive those new wineries should be - to us all.
One (5th generation) property owner described how she would be unable to develop their dream winery if the minimum property size went to 40 acres. Another couple saw their dream business as exposing tourists to the authentic experience of small farm life. Stanley Boyd of Visit Napa Valley supported them saying that the small winery owners provided the "authentic" winery experience that his visitors wanted. Tourism and "authenticity" are, of course, mutually exclusive, but there does need to be a place for the winery startup - perhaps a family winery that means what it says. Just one of many solutions that the committee will probably not explore.
Overall this meeting was quite a disappointment. It appears that APAC may only be concerned with tweaks to the numbers in the current WDO, and not about more radical solutions or the larger implications of continued event center development. At best there may be a very modest change in the number of event centers being proposed in the future. I could be wrong, of course.