Daniel Mufson | Jan 15, 2017

Update Dottie Lee LTE 2/3/17: Don't denigrate good citizenship
NVR 1/18/17: Napa's wine battles turn to pizza skirmish

From the NVR article: 'Stults called Vision 2050 “a small, divisive group of people with the ambition of taking down the Napa Valley wine industry.”'

I don't speak for Napa Vision 2050, but there are many people in the county who are concerned about the changing nature of the wine industry, and the impact of that change on the rural character of the county and the quality of their lives, and that have no interest in "taking down the wine industry". Quite the opposite; the wine industry, built by resident vintners and growers that valued not only the success of their industry but the preservation of their rural communities has always had the respect of the other rural residents that benefit from the maintenance of a rural environment and small town life that was its product.

But the industry, as the industry itself constantly mentions, is changing. And the nature of that change is toxic to residents that treasure the bucholic pleasure of an agricultural economy. It is difficult to know whether the wine industry is becoming, or is just acting as a cover for, the tourism, entertainment, real estate and consturction interests that are beginning to engulf us all with development. Traffic is only a symptom of a development boom that is filling the vineyards with buildings and parking lots, and clearcutting hillsides for estates, resorts and more vineyards to replace those paved over on the valley floor, and for the tourism conversion of the municipalities that eliminates affordable housing and decimates the sense of small-town community life. And for the mining of parklands to build it all.

In a previous generation the wine industry fought the urbanizing trajectory that those industries represent. Urbanization is the death of agriculture. One is left to wonder why now, after 40 some years of the wine industry being the defender of a rural environment, it is now up to the residents, against all odds including the bullying of the wine industry, to try to save the rural environment which an agricultural economy needs to exist.

A year and a half ago, the Napa Valley Vintners launched a PR campaign dubbed Our Napa Valley, casting the urban impacts as solvable with transport infrastructure and more housing, i.e. more development. Until the wine industry returns to the notion that curbing development is in its own best long-term interest, as well as the interest of all citizens concerned about preserving the rural character of this place, skirmishes will no doubt continue.

The pizzagate archive:
NVR 2/3/17: Don't denigrate good citizenship
NVR 1/30/17: Wealth, power and entitlement
NVR 1/20/17: Redefining Vision 2050
NV2050 1/22/17: Give pizza a chance
NVR 1/18/17: Just say no to bullying
NV2050 1/15/17: The wine industry strikes back
NVR 1/18/17: Napa's wine battles turn to pizza skirmish
NVR 1/10/17: Suffering a lack of leadership
NVR 12/310/16: No. 1 story of 2016: Wine industry under fire

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