Bill Hocker | Jun 19, 2020

Another new winery is up before the Planning Commission on Jul 1, 2020: the Alta Napa Valley Winery. It is modest; 10,000 gal/yr, 3660 visitors per year. It is just the kind of small "family winery" that is easy to approve. But there are issues nonetheless.

It will be located on the Trail just south of the strawberry stand. The building is about 85' from the edge of the Trail requiring a variance to the 600' required setback. It is so close to the road because that is the one tiny corner of the site that is not in the Napa River flood zone. (It seems the only affordable sites for new wineries these days need dispensations to be developed, and the County seems to want every 10+ acre site to have a winery on it.)

It is an unhandsome box of a building bristling with solar collectors surrounded by a parking lot and water tanks. It's entry is a couple hundred feet south of the strawberry stand increasing the dangers of the harrowing traffic movement already there. And It is one more winery adding to the strip-mall of wineries developing on the lower portion of the Trail.

This box will join the just-finished boxy house north of the strawberry stand and the boxy Ellman house completed last year. (I have a thing, obviously, about boxes in bucholic landscapes.)

Documents for the project are on the 7/1/20 agenda and on the new Napa County Current Projects Explorer. (You'll have to do some digging to find the documents - it is no longer possible to link to a individual project page.)

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