Tasting rooms or party spots?

 
CRISTA JEREMIASON / THE PRESS DEMOCRAT Sarah Blake of San Francisco, left, Matt Bartoe of Ventura and Courtney Warusso of San Francisco listen to a band on the patio at Imagery Winery.

Sonoma County officials are seeking to curb the trend of wine tasting rooms staying open into the cocktail hour and possibly sending inebriated drivers onto roadways.

“If you turn everybody out on the streets at 6 p.m., we don't want a lot of drivers who have been lit up and drinking since 10 a.m.,” said county planning commissioner Dick Fogg.

Traditionally, winery tasting rooms have closed at 4 p.m., but in recent years, more and more of them have been seeking permission to serve wine sippers until 5 or 6 p.m.

Graton resident Jo Bentz raised the issue last month during the hearing on the Best Family Winery's application for a production facility and tasting room. Noting that the Graton and Occidental area already has at least a half-dozen tasting rooms, Bentz questioned whether extending their operating hours could put more alcohol-impaired drivers on the road.

“We have people drinking and people driving out of tasting rooms,” she said. “Maybe these tasting rooms should be required to have designated drivers.”

West county Supervisor Efren Carrillo said the Best Family's request for a 6 p.m. closing hour at its tasting room was too late, and supervisors agreed, trimming it back to 5 p.m.

That decision opened the door on an issue that is now before the county planning commission because of heightened concern about late-afternoon tastings becoming too rowdy and sending drunken drivers onto wine county routes.

Fogg, the planning commission chairman, said the county's planning department has been asked to develop recommendations for limiting tasting room hours, but did not have a timetable for when the commission will receive a report.

“The county has been willy-nilly and arbitrary on hours. But on top of that, the system has been operating without a lot of equitability according to the size of the tasting room or the volume of production at the winery,” Fogg said.

Although wineries currently holding use permits can't have their tasting room hours changed, they can be altered when wineries apply for many types of use permit changes, he said.

Jennifer Barrett, deputy director of the county's Permit and Resource Management Department, told supervisors at the March hearing that residents along Dry Creek Road and in the Sonoma Valley have expressed strong interest in “avoiding late-afternoon tastings that turn into cocktail hours with bar-like atmospheres.”

Nick Frey, executive director of the Sonoma County Winegrape Commission, suggested that efforts to curb tasting room hours will adversely affect the ability of wineries to make ends meet during a recession and in the face of increasing competition for tourism dollars.

“Wineries are trying to figure out how to survive economically,” Frey said.