Barrel of fun, wine or both?

At least since Isabelle Simi converted a big wine vat at her Healdsburg winery along the Old Redwood Highway into a roadside wine tasting  room just after the Great Depression and that “little old winemaker” invited the world to visit the Italian Swiss Colony, Sonoma County has beckoned agricultural visitors. Organized in 1973, a hundred or so small family farms created Sonoma County Farm Trails to welcome thousands of Gravenstein Fair goers, pumpkin patch seekers and Christmas Tree farm trekkers. Before that, apple blossom and prune blossom tours drew busloads of out-of-towners.
It’s only been recently that some of us started complaining we might have too many visitors to our farms, vineyards and wineries. Some say our rural landscape and pace of living is being spoiled. This has become a very dominant discussion among neighborhood groups, valley associations, in countywide politics and inside the ag and wine industry itself. There is no question we have altered both the landscape and the definition of most things about farming, rural and tradition here.
With the 37th annual Wine Road Barrel Tasting event happening this weekend and next, this might be a good time to reflect on all the changes we have brought upon ourselves and consider re-checking the expectations and self-defined rules that protect our rural landscape and heritage, while supporting our world-class agriculture and the economic vitality of our visitor-oriented enterprises.
At its beginning, Barrel Tasting was a sleepy, mid-winter event for a trickle of wine tasters, sampling the soon-to-be-released wines of the most recent harvest. Now it is a Bay Area destination for hundreds of busloads of both wine fans and party revelers, waking up from a short winter hibernation. A lot happens during Barrel Tasting, but very little has to do with farming. Granted, without these kinds of promotions, we would have fewer successful winegrowers and winemakers, many who are still smaller family concerns.
The county Board of Supervisors this year has made updating and clarifying permitted event and land uses in our rural areas a top priority. Just about everyone agrees we need new standards and permit outlines. When is a “winery event” not an “ag-supportive” event? How many pumpkin patch visitors on a narrow country road are too many? Can we set limits on how many wineries we want to allow in our designated viticultural areas or small valleys?
There is no question that our farm traditions have changed. Today, there are 2,601 permitted events that are allowed by county land use permits at 439 wineries. In Dry Creek Valley alone, there are 417 event permits shared by 78 wineries. That means neighborhoods like Westside Road and West Dry Creek can expect to encounter at least one special event every weekend of the year. Some of these are essential as “ag-supportive” events. But where do weddings, private or corporate parties and non-farm activities fit in?
New rules must address not only wine-related activities, but such rural pursuits as farm stays, diverse-ag education events, new direct-to-consumer efforts and emerging models for producer networks and ag fundraising programs.
We are not as rural as we once were. We have lost forever some of our open vistas, dusty hamlets and sleepy crossroads. But we can act now to both preserve and enhance what rural heritage we still have without placing it behind glassed panels in a museum.
We have become crowded with our own success. Our county supervisors need to get enough of us around a planning table and agree to enforceable and ag-firmative guidelines. Rural zoning should be farm-only, or at least farm-friendly. Maybe it’s become time to tolerate limousines in vineyards, or maybe we still prefer a less intense style of farming. Whatever we think we want, we’d better write it down. Now.
— Rollie Atkinson