Winery Use Permit Approvals
(e) Napa County is one of the smallest counties in California and within the County areas suitable for quality vineyards are limited and irreplaceable. Any project that directly or indirectly results in the removal of existing or potential vineyard land from use depletes the inventory of such land forever.
(f) The cumulative effect of such projects is far greater than the sum of individual projects. The interspersing of non-agricultural structures and activities throughout agricultural areas in excess of what already exists will result in a significant increase in the problems and costs of maintaining vineyards and discourage the continued use of the land for agricultural purposes.
- - from the Napa County Winery Definition Ordinance 1990
County's current projects explorer (buggy and doesn't work in all browsers)
County's winery dashboard (existing/pending wineries/expansions - not publicly accessible)
Download County Database of Napa wineries as of 2020
Shute, Mihaly, Weinberger spreadsheet of 2016-2019 winery approvals
This Memo for the 5/Nov/15 PC meeting gives the most complete list of approvals since 2006 and projects under review through 2015, as well as other information
Wineries use permits approved and in review since 2010
[Note: I am no longer being diligent in updating the list below. That doesn't mean that the trajectory of urbanization that it represents has diminished. As of 11/2/22 there are 161 development projects under review at the county planning department, many of them wineries.]
This map shows the production capacity of new wineries and winery expansions approved, but probably not yet built, in the last 4 years in Napa County. The orange circles are approved projects. The red circles are projects still under review by the planning department.
Legend: review, hearing, approved
Re-center
The figures below represent numbers initially proposed in the applications; it is difficult to find the numbers actually approved and I welcome correction where the two differ. The visitor numbers are approximate since they are difficult to tease out of the agenda requests. I try to err or approximate on the low side using, for example 300 days per year or 50 weeks per year to compute daily or weekly totals. I also try to keep the lists current but there's only so much time.
Clicking on the date will bring up citizen portal or PC agendas for the projects. (Although the county keeps moving documents around and many links may be broken.) Clicking on the name will show google map location.
The Save Yountville Hill group produced a similar (and perhaps more accurate) table for their appeal here
Use permit applications currently under reveiw in the planning department
It has proven difficult to keep up with new projects being added or dropped. The County's Current Project Explorer doesn't help. I will continue to add new projects at least when they are scheduled for the Planning Commission if not before.
All of the numbers in the table below represent additions to existing conditions.
Winery Use permits approved since 2010
All of the numbers in the table below represent additions to existing conditions.
Map and table of vineyard conversions happening in the county is here
Map and table of all development projects happening in the county is here