Valley winery event guidelines taking shape

A vineyard would need a minimum of 10 acres to qualify for an onsite tasting room, the visual impact of winery facilities should be minimized, and a maximum of 6.5 acres can be used for accessory uses on a vineyard parcel of any size over 50 acres – and while tasting rooms can only open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., winery events can go as late as 10 p.m., but no later.

These are a few of the guidelines proposed for Sonoma Valley Wineries in a long-awaited set of draft guidelines, to be evaluated on Wednesday, Nov. 18, when the Sonoma Valley Citizens Advisory Commission will take a long look at the Valley Winery Guidelines, with community participation via Zoom, at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 18.

If the urgency to deal with unmanaged growth in winery events has been diminished by the serial emergencies of regional fires, power outages and pandemic response, the issues will eventually return – neighborhoods overrun with tipsy tasters on event weekends, cars parking along the highway, noisy parties running into the evening hours.

The draft Sonoma Valley Winery Guidelines has been in development since 2015, when Tennis Wick, director of Permit Sonoma, brought together various stakeholders to hash out a plan to regulate winery events. The “Working Group,” as it came to be known, included wineries big and wineries small, neighborhood groups, event promoters, environmentalists and other business interests.

The Working Group provided an often lively exchange of ideas. It met for six months, and passed along its conclusions about the relative business needs versus local concerns. Following two county-wide study sessions with the county Board of Supervisors, it all resulted in a 2019 directive from the Board of Supervisors to update policies regulating “Agricultural Promotional Activities,” aka winery events.

The supervisors cited three specific regions that deserve special attention, and should each have their own set of guidelines: Dry Creek Valley near Healdsburg; the Russian River Valley on Westside Road; and the Sonoma Valley along Highway 12. The Dry Creek Valley guidelines were presented in draft form in March, 2018; the Westside Road guidelines are still in development.

And now the Sonoma Valley Winery Guidelines enter the review process with this week’s SVCAC meeting.

The review of the Draft Sonoma Valley Winery Guidelines is expected to be presented to the Sonoma County Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors in the spring of 2021.

The 17-mile long Sonoma Valley includes a variety of landscapes and microclimates, used and zoned as agricultural land — 13,000 acres of which are vineyard. According to the Sonoma Valley Vintners and Growers Alliance (sonomavalleywine.com), the area contains 114 wineries, 76 of which have tasting rooms and many with permitted regular events. However, the health order restrictions have cut into those events, and the largest valley-wide event, the three-day Taste of Sonoma Valley, went “virtual” for 2020.

But, in the expectation that pre-pandemic lifestyles eventually return, residents remain concerned about the disruptions that events have caused in the past and can cause in the future. And not everyone is convinced that the newly advanced draft guidelines will significantly control those disruptions – or do enough to protect the agricultural character of Sonoma Valley.

“The main point of this whole thing I think is how do you protect agriculture from further commercialization, when it might turn out to be more profitable to forget about the wine production and just have events,” said Kenwood resident Kathy Pons, one of the original members of the Working Group from 2015 and president of the Valley of the Moon Alliance neighborhood watchdog group.

She said that although the supervisors’ directive was to look at areas of event over-concentration, the guidelines fall short of that mission. “I think the county was hoping the guidelines would satisfy concerns about the areas of over-concentration, but I don’t see these guidelines really help that at all.”

These are the areas in the Valley that show up as blue circles in the winery events map: areas with more than 26 to 50 or more winery events per year, at least twice a month. These areas are called out as places with sufficient traffic and road safety concerns to deserve particular attention when an application comes up for review by the SVCAC and Planning Department.

There’s one just north of Kenwood, right about where St. Francis and Landmark stand. There’s one in Glen Ellen – in fact there’s three overlapping circles in the area of BR Cohn and Imagery/Chateau St. Jean wineries. There’s a circle at Cornerstone, and Viansa nearby.

But Pons is among those disappointed by the guidelines that will be presented, and not just for its internal inconsistencies. “They’re just guidelines, and for an advisory committee whose recommendations are not enforceable either.” But she hopes the SVCAC will look at the draft guidelines in depth, and make strong recommendations.

“I hope they will be bold and demanding, but they’re still an advisory committee, so the county can take it or leave it,” she said about the upcoming meeting. “But I also think there needs to be a county-wide ordinance that would create some of the baselines” for winery size, event frequency and other measures.

Such common, consensual definitions of wineries, tasting rooms, accessory uses and especially events would help alleviate the conflicts and environmental impacts of the over-concentration of winery events in the Valley. Whether or not this draft of the guidelines accomplishes that task will be the primary topic of discussion at Wednesday’s meeting.

The SVCAC meeting will be held via Zoom, beginning at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 18.

Email Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.