News: Cosentino Producing Too Much Wine

[Carolyn Tillie]

Rabbit Ridge Winery essentially left Northern California for the Paso Robles area several years ago under a similar circumstance to what Cosentino is now being fined for:

The Napa County District Attorney's Office is claiming Cosentino Winery in Yountville was too big for its legally-defined britches, in violation of a court injunction fashioned almost five years ago. Prosecutors are seeking a penalty of more than $75,000 against the winery in civil court. The action is a follow-up to the results of a 1999 lawsuit, California v. Mustards, Inc., in which Vintage Grapevine and Mitchell Cosentino promised not to violate any condition of their use permit. The permit states Cosentino cannot produce more than 30,000 gallons of wine each year at the facility.

[wnissen]

In advance, I ask you to please pardon my sarcasm.

Oh, my! God forbid someone make wine, at a winery, in Napa! My god, they'll be sacrificing goats by the hundreds, next! Seriously, the folks living in Napa lucked out and the industry that developed turned out to be viniculture, and not hog farming. Rather than celebrating their good fortune of having wineries paying mucho taxes with minimal pollution, and a landscape made for coffee table books, they constantly try to restrict the very industry that makes the valley what it is. Grrr.

Walt

[Smithy]

Why would a use permit set a limit on a winery's production? Is there a water consumption issue involved? Truck traffic? What's the deal?