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It’s easy to spot a hardcore winemaker this time of year. All you need do is look at his or her hands, and the evidence is in the purple stains that just won’t budge, no matter how hard one scrubs. Come September and October, you know exactly where to find people in the wine business. They’re out in the vineyard supervising the harvest, often in the early morning hours before the sun creeps over the Sierra. Or, they are on the crush pad, crushing grapes, pressing juice, punching down macro bins, or muscling barrels around the winery. It is hard, brutal work—physically challenging and potentially hazardous labor—with killer hours spent behind the controls of a fork lift, teasing gingerly to lift untold tons of fruit.
You bust a lot of knuckles making wine, especially on the
mom-and-pop level practiced here in Placer County. I personally know
every family involved in commercial wine making in these parts, and
there is nary a dilettante in the bunch. As a group, I’ve never met
people more committed to their work, more passionate about their craft
and more willing to give back to this community. If you harbor the notion that winemakers make bank selling their
luscious juice at 25 bucks a bottle, you would be very wrong. With the
enormous, up-front capital investment required to get into the
business, coupled with the reality of an average 10-year break-even
period, I have to believe every winemaker in Placer County is still
upside down financially. So, it is easy to understand why
winemakers in our corner of paradise are just a bit concerned about the
new winery ordinance being drafted by Placer County. These are
independent people, entrepreneurs who work like pack animals and know
how to move mountains. They don’t take directions easily, yet they are
already saddled with a legion of regulators who dictate everything from
how they handle waste water to what language can be printed on their
wine labels. Our nascent wine industry has effervesced in a very
short time—in less than 10 years—with 12 bonded wineries now in
operation, some tucked away in remote corners of the county and
accessed via gravel country lanes. And therein is one of the rubs. The
problem is while a vibrant and growing local wine industry offers many
benefits for Placer County, it also has the potential to create at
least intermittent traffic problems for neighbors who have shunned
crowded cities in favor of the quiet and solitude of a rural lifestyle. Another
issue is existing wineries vary widely in size and case production, as
well as acreage devoted to vines and investments in infrastructure. As
the county attempts to create standards for how and where wineries
should operate, they must do a delicate dance that recognizes the
embedded investment already made by the winery pioneers in our midst. So
far, it appears the Placer County Planning Department staff has done an
excellent job in listening to two divergent special interest groups.
It has incorporated a number of ideas and suggestions brought to the
table by winery owners (who drafted a model ordinance of their own),
and it has acknowledged the issues raised by a group of rural
homeowners called the Neighborhood Rescue Group, whom, in the final
analysis, would probably prefer to see winery development banned
completely. The biggest deal breaker for wineries with the new
ordinance, however, centers on proposed rules to enhance fire
protection. Fire officials are demanding, in certain instances,
construction of 20-foot wide roadways capable of handling 20-ton
emergency vehicles for access to winery tasting rooms. Wineries aren’t
thrilled with the huge costs involved, especially when such
improvements would, in some cases, be served by narrow, crumbling
country roads. The simple economic fact is wineries make the most
money when they sell a bottle of wine from their own tasting room,
avoiding the high costs of distribution. But so far, Mt. Vernon Winery
is the only facility in the county with a tasting room featuring
regular hours of operation. And that’s a shame because a legitimate
“wine trail” of quality tasting rooms would attract much appreciated
tourist dollars from all over the region. There is a French term,
“terrior,” that describes how place affects the character of a wine,
how all of the naturally occurring physical elements blend to create
very special flavors and aromas in the bottle. The wine vinted in
Placer County is one of the few products made here that expresses the
true nature of this land we call home (beyond the wonderful PlacerGrown
fruits and vegetables). As custodians of Placer County, it is our
charge to do everything possible to not only preserve but also nurture
this sustainable resource—balanced against the needs of neighbors who
share the roadways and solitude of the valleys and hillsides. In
my mind, however, there is a real and present threat to all forms of
agriculture in Placer County: the relentless machine of development
replacing fields and open space with mega housing tracts and commercial
projects. The bottom line is agriculture simply does not generate the
kind of continuing handsome tax revenues produced by estate homes. At
the end of the day, will the Supervisors act to maintain the important
agricultural and quality of life benefits wineries and vineyards help
create, or will they follow the money? No question about it,
creating a workable winery ordinance is a huge challenge, but a
restrictive law would be a de facto death knell for further winery
development in the county. Reasonable people with open minds should be
able to get it right, though, and responsible leadership will help
preserve our agrarian legacy. Gary Moffat is a journalist and
co-owner of Carpe Vino in Old Town Auburn. Read his other work at
www.onlyinauburn.com and www.carpevinoauburn.com.
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