I believe some tasting rooms in Oregon reopened last week. Santa Barbara County tasting rooms reopened this week provided they served a meal. Napa County refused to suspend the prohibition on tasting rooms serving food and their tasting rooms are still closed. Unsure what is happening in Sonoma. For those tasting rooms that have reopened how is it going?
i’ve got an iFriend with a small winery in Newberg, OR. he’s been open for two weeks since they gave him the green light, and says the response has been good to great. people are being respectful and accepting of the new protocols. lots and lots of cleaning and sanitizing to be done before, in between groups, and after each day.
i’ve received a few emails from wineries in Sonoma County who will be opening today or this weekend. same for my social feed. with the current grey areas in guidelines from various agencies, i wish them all the best.
The protocols may not be enough but they will be tested. The SIP says no traveling more than 10 miles from your home unless necessary. All of sudden we are seeing people from San Francisco, Oakland, Concord and even farther away. Their counties are still on lock-down because of the number of cases. I know they want a break from SIP, some normalcy, something different, but will they bring the virus with them. On the flip side, locals aren’t going to flock to tasting rooms in Napa and tourists are what they are geared for. A Catch 22 but hopefully the wineries can make it work.
Groth had most of their tasting room personnel doing calls, e-mails and virtual tastings with previous customers and club members. Several of them got to move to the bottling line for a couple weeks and now they are setting up the tasting room to comply with the protocols. My friend/customer that works there says he’s learned a whole new approach to customer service and salesmanship, plus working the bottling line, he was reminded why older people don’t normally work the bottling line.
When we bottled, I was assigned the skill job at the end of the line putting the boxes on the pallet.
Might as well open them up in Sonoma County since the Sheriff has decided not to enforce the health ordinance.
I wonder if the winery with 14 newly discovered C19 cases will change the Sheriff’s position.
A friend in Sonoma was pretty upset with the Sheriff’s action but also statement about the public health head. Sounded bad.
Nope, he knew about that from the meeting Friday before He doubled down on his decision.
Went to Brewsters Beer Garden in Petaluma on Saturday night. Place was packed to capacity with probably 250+ people with ZERO social distancing at the tables (some tables had 12 people shoulder to shoulder). It felt exhilarating to see our two friends and have dinner being we haven’t left our house in 75 days, but at the same time wondered how all this will affect Sonoma County COVID wise. Think we’re going to wait before we go out to dinner there again…