Anger in Sonoma County over expanding wineries/wine production

From the front page of today’s LA Times; it’s clearly more than simply a battle over scarce water:

“They’re not just selling wine anymore,” Bommersbach said. “They’re selling parties. They’re selling an experience, more so than the quality of the wine. It’s the migration of urban activity into rural areas.” Padi Selwyn, of Wine and Water Watch, an activist group spanning four counties, said Sonoma runs the risk of being a “Disneyland for alcohol tourism.”

Bruce

Two (OK Three) thoughts…( I have more but , hey who has all day)…

  1. These articles don’t ever mention the prime reason there are so many “event centers”… and that’s because the 3 tiered distribution model is broken, and unavailable for the vast majority of small brands…

  2. The French somehow deal with this just fine, what this is a uniquely American, Neo-Prohibitionist sect, who are very vocal. Sort of like the “Tea-Party”…

  3. Must be nice to be retired and not need to earn a living…

from the article, "Jackson Family Wines, which owns about 3,200 acres in Sonoma, has agreed to report well water use but wants the state water board to keep individual companies’ data private, said Carolyn Wasem, the winery’s senior vice president for government and regulatory affairs.

"I think from Jackson Family Wines’ perspective, we have nothing to hide," Wasem said. “We do an enormous amount of water conservation and are trying to work with the agencies to protect resources. We feel not necessarily happy about it, but I think we’re comfortable with it.”

So what is it that ‘they’ are comfortable with, keeping data private or having nothing to hide?

Where is the talking-out-of-both-sides-of-the-mouth emoticon?

When someone says, “need to get back to true” anything, I suspect that “back to when”, and “true” are going to be highly selective and based on a limited agenda. I think they would be better off just focusing on the water use.

P Hickner

65% of GDP and 1 in 3 jobs in Sonoma County are in the wine industry. It has long been this way. Go ahead and cut off that nose, you’ll get crack, meth and bloody scabs instead of jobs. I’m for the environment but if you want to find the culprits, look at Nestle, big oil(fracking) and the ganja water thieves.

The only destructive aspect that I see in wineries is frost protection. Here is where we as an industry can improve. I would like to see SCWC go on the offensive rather than just focusing on sustainable.

I think they mean the removal of protection from consumption of water. They are comfortable with it but not happy.