California Wineries Fight Napa’s Wine Tasting Restrictions

In 1976, at the now famous Judgment of ParisCalifornia wines took first place among French wines in a transatlantic tasting competition. The result shocked the global wine world, especially considering that the event judges were French— and tourists began to flock to Napa Valley. Ten years later, in 1986, California. past The country’s first direct-to-consumer wine law, allowing wine to be delivered straight from the vineyard to your doorstep.

Since then, the wine power of the Napa Valley has been unstoppable. But now Napa County government itself is stifling the very businesses that put the region on the world map.

This saga actually predates the famous triumph in Paris. In 1968 Napa Agricultural Preserve was created to prioritize agricultural zoning and prevent development. In 1990, Napa County implemented Decree defining winemaking it outlines the requirements for wineries to operate, including whether wineries must obtain an operating permit.

To conduct tastings, wineries must have on site a “wine production facility” that comes with many additional requirements, such as parking regulations and a construction cost of up to $5 million. This obviously gives an advantage to large corporate wineries in the Napa Valley, which can easily afford such expenses. To level the playing field, small wineries that already existed at the time of the 1990 regulation were released from the need to obtain permission to use in accordance with the paternity clause.

These small wineries realized their liberation and allowed on-site wine tastings—and have held such tastings for decades—only to be informed by county officials in the last few years that tastings were effectively prohibited. One winery was sued by the county for engaging in such allegedly nefarious activities as hosting tastings, hanging decorative lanterns, and holding yoga classes on site (the county audited the winery using “mystery shoppers”). Other wineries just found out through the county winery database, which apparently was changed without any notice, thereby silently change approved activities of more than 20 wineries.

As one Napa winemaker who has been conducting tastings since the 70s said: said Wine Spectator: “Now, 48 years later, without my notice or permission to be present to protect my rights, the County has arbitrarily and capriciously changed my permit to zero visitors per day… I only found out about this when I came across the Napa County Wineries Database. … This is insane government overreach; Kafka would be pleased.”

The rules governing these wineries were subject to this regulatory change due to the county’s confusing regulatory code. which “a patchwork of undocumented ‘policies’ and procedures,” according to three Napa wineries that filed a joint lawsuit v. Napa County. They argue that the regulations “are so vague that they allow Napa County officials to exercise their unfettered discretion and restrict wineries as they see fit.”

This is more than a tasting policy. One winemaker got a quote and a stop-work order from the county as it tried to clear 80 acres of burned and dead trees and replant the area after a 2020 wildfire. Napa County also requires its wineries will use at least 75 percent Napa-grown grapes in their wines. (Similar mandates have been repealed in recent years in Minnesota and Michigan due to their discriminatory impact on out-of-county and out-of-state vineyards.)

The lawsuit alleges that many of these district rules violate California law as well as the First Amendment. Wineries argue that their right to host visitors and hold tastings is protected by the First Amendment and that the county is further violating free speech by regulating “cultural events” at wineries. The lawsuit also argues that the 75 percent grape mandate violates the Dormant Commerce Clause because it acts as a form of economic protectionism.

The district tried to appear more cooperative, rules for passing in 2022 create a new permit for microwineries that would loosen some of the strictest rules if the winery was considered small in size. But as of April 2024only two wineries were approved for the new permit category.

Given the ongoing unrest and decline in the global wine marketNapa officials should be doing everything they can to support their wineries, not hinder them. Instead, half a century after the Judgment of Paris, scores of wineries in America’s most famous wine region still struggle to pour their customers a simple glass of wine.