With Temecula’s wine industry as a guidepost, the Santa Barbara County Vintners Association aims to increase local wine sales and tourism by more than doubling its revenue.
From September 2022 to September 2023, Temecula’s wine industry visitation increased by 18 percent, thanks to its wine business improvement district (BID), according to vintners association Chief Executive Officer Alison Laslett.
“We could see Temecula pulling ahead when they had their wine BID,” Laslett told the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors on Dec. 17, 2024.
It’s the vintners association’s second attempt to establish a countywide wine BID—a special district where assessments on specific businesses help pay for marketing efforts. The first effort petered out at the end of 2020, but at the Dec. 17 meeting, supervisors unanimously adopted a resolution of intent to establish a countywide wine BID; request the consent of the county’s cities; set a public meeting for Jan. 14; and a public hearing on Feb. 11.
Laslett said a 1 percent assessment on direct-to-consumer retail wine sales in all wine tasting facilities in the county could generate an estimated $1.5 million to $1.6 million for the vintners association that would enable the organization to bring recognition and visitation to the region in a way that it hasn’t been able to do in the past.
“We are constantly scrambling to keep up with ourselves,” she said. “In California, there’s Napa, there’s Sonoma, and then Paso and Santa Barbara are constantly vying for third place.”
Napa’s wine association, Laslett said, has $10 million to spend, Sonoma’s has $6 million to $8 million, and Paso Robles’ association has about $2 million. By contrast, the Santa Barbara County Vintners Association’s annual budget is right around $600,000, she added.
Money from the wine BID would be spent on marketing the county, brand awareness, events, community engagement, government education, and industry education. Legally, funding must be spent on programs and activities that provide specific benefits to the payor, vintners association consultant Gina Reed from Civitas Advisors told supervisors.
She explained that a wine BID would work similarly to tourism business improvement districts. The state has 114 such districts, two of which are in the county: one for the Santa Ynez Valley and one in Solvang.
They are “essentially the same thing, except for hotels; we are focused on the wine businesses and except for hotel rooms, the assessment is focused on direct-to-consumer wine sales,” Reed said, adding that it’s “becoming an increasingly popular funding mechanism in the wine industry.”
Since January, Civitas and the association have been doing outreach and consensus building with the industry. More than 50 percent of the businesses that would have to pay the assessment signed onto the petition in favor of forming the wine BID, which is more support than the association received in 2020.
One of the wine BID’s most vocal opponents, Steve Pepe of Clos-Pepe Vineyards, spoke at the Dec. 17 meeting and repeated an argument he made against the BID in 2020: that the majority of wineries in Santa Barbara County that are small mom-and-pop operations don’t support it.
Pierre LaBarge IV of LaBarge Winery told supervisors that he was one of those who didn’t support the BID when it was initially proposed. He wasn’t a member of the vintners association at that time either. After some reflection, LaBarge said, he took the time to listen to association board members about what a BID was and how it would impact the industry.
“Here we are a few years later, and I serve as the president of the association,” La Barge said. “We are making some of the best wines in the world, and we deserve a strong and well-funded association to help us in such a competitive market.”
He added that 59.1 percent of businesses that would be impacted support the BID, and the association expects to have closer to two-thirds support in the near future.
“That is a mandate,” he said.
One of the things that makes Santa Barbara County wine country so interesting is the same thing that can make it such a difficult area to market, Third District Supervisor Joan Hartmann said. It’s diverse, with several different micro-climates, wine varieties, wineries, vintners, and American Viticultural Areas.
“To get almost 60 percent to agree on something is really quite extraordinary,” Hartmann said. “I think that this is really, really important for the wine industry and for our county.”
This article appears in Jan 2-12, 2025.