Small wineries in Santa Barbara County are allowed to have tasting rooms under a new ordinance change approved by the Planning Commission during a special meeting on Sept. 19.
The commissioners voted 4-1 to approve changes to the ordinance. Cecilia Brown, commissioner for the 2nd District, was the only dissenting vote. She suggested that rather than allowing tasting rooms on small parcels, Lompoc’s Wine Ghetto could be an alternative for small vintners to start off in the wine business.
“I hope the wine industry understands it’s not all about business,” Brown said in her dissent.
The vote is the latest in years for an industry that brings a $1.7 billion economic impact to the county.
The updated ordinance must still receive final approval from the Board of Supervisors. According to David Lackie, the director for the county’s Department of Planning and Development, an update was necessary due to gray areas in the ordinance that were open to interpretation. Previously, wineries were approved for tasting rooms on a case-by-case basis.
Some of the changes require wineries within rural and inner-rural parts of the county “or semi-urban areas” to have a minimum of 20 and 40 acres, respectively, and would include public tasting rooms.
One of the most significant changes to the ordinance, which affects the entire county, allows small Tier A wineries (those with a minimum of 10 acres) to have tasting rooms no bigger than 300 square feet but to keep tastings by appointment only.
A requirement that new wineries have at least 20 percent of its production from grapes grown on the property was eliminated.
The approval is a victory to vintners of smaller wineries who want the ability to market their estate wines to stay viable in an increasingly expensive business model.
“There’s no way to make it feasible unless you invite guests on to the property,” Dave Potter of Municipal Winery in Santa Barbara said.
Part of the reason small wineries want tasting rooms is to bring the customer directly to the source of the wine, according to Morgen McLaughlin, executive director of the Santa Barbara County Vintners Association. Other winemakers liken it to the local food movement.
Not everyone is on board with the ordinance changes. County residents who opposed the changes cited issues ranging from quality of life to safety with the coming of more tasting rooms, particularly traffic safety along Ballard Canyon Road which has the potential to include some Tier A wineries.
For some, such as Debbie Earl, who identified herself as a resident who lives inside the Santa Rita Hills American Viticultural Area, it wasn’t simply about tasting rooms but the impacts on scarce water resources and the impacts that result from harvesting grapes, she said.
This article appears in Sep 22-29, 2016.
