Vintner unveils plan for large winery outside Santa Rosa

A Napa County vintner looking for additional production space is laying plans for a large-scale winery and distillery on a pastoral stretch of Highway 12 between Santa Rosa and Sebastopol.

The facility, which would be capable of producing up to 500,000 cases of wine and 250,000 gallons of distilled spirits a year, would be constructed on the site of an old family dairy on the south edge of the highway, about 100 yards east of Llano Road.

Current property owner and winemaker Joe Wagner already uses fruit from 40 acres of pinot noir vineyards planted on the 68-acre site in some of the premium wines produced in Napa Valley under his Belle Glos label.

A member of the winemaking family behind Caymus Vineyards and several other brands, Wagner wants to make wines at the so-called Dairyman site from grapes harvested there, in the Russian River Valley, and elsewhere in Sonoma County, as well as a type of apple brandy beverage reflecting the west county’s agricultural heritage.

The proposal is still very early in planning stages, and it could be some months before Wagner’s applications for a county permit and design review are ready for public hearings, said Traci Tesconi, a county planner.

But concerned residents began mobilizing within hours of learning about the proposal late last week. They are worried about the size of the project, its anticipated effect on traffic, and environmental impacts that include potential demands on the groundwater basin, particularly as the drought continues.

The project would generate both production and tasting room traffic on a two-lane stretch of Highway 12 that’s already congested, critics said, and a driveway that crosses the Joe Rodota multi-use trail.

“It’s the wrong place, and it’s the wrong size,” said Shepherd Bliss, a Sebastopol farmer and sometimes activist. “It’s too big for that area.”

Though nowhere near the 4.9 million-case production capacity held by wine giant Gallo of Sonoma, or even the estimated 840,000 cases produced under the Wagner Family’s Caymus and Conundrum labels, the Dairyman winery would be tied with four others for the 15th largest permitted winemaking facility in Sonoma County.

But Wagner said he wants to improve and upgrade the site, whose dilapidated dairy buildings have been used in recent years for a variety of fairly intensive uses like composting, dry-wall reclamation and concrete pumping.

His intent, he said, is to develop only the part of the property that’s within the footprint of the dairy and prior uses, sparing several acres of land that could be planted in vines out of a desire to preserve tiger salamander habitat and other environmental considerations.

The project plans include substantial building setbacks and landscaping that would maintain an agrarian aesthetic, continued use of reclaimed wastewater for vineyard irrigation, and water conservation practices employed in Rutherford that have significantly reduced the volume of water used in wine production to a point well below the industry standard, Wagner said.

He said hauling Sonoma County grapes to the Dairyman site instead of all the way to Napa County would diminish greenhouse gas emissions.

Wagner, 32, purchased the property a little over two years ago from the Medeiros dairy family, its longtime owners, and said he and his team viewed it for a potential winery “because it’s bettering the property.”

“We knew we’d get some community pushback,” he said Monday, “but I’m looking forward to the day I can bring people out there to let them see.”

The Sonoma County Permit and Resource Management Department is circulating Wagner’s application to a variety of agencies for input while county staff conducts its own preliminary assessment. Recipients included the city of Sebastopol, which put it on the agenda for City Council consideration Tuesday night, bringing public attention to the plan.

Some of those scrutinizing the proposal already are gearing up to demand a full environmental impact report. The numbers cited in the application have people reeling.

“I think the size of this - it’s just so immense that it has knocked everybody back on their heels,” said Jane Nielsen, a local hydrologist.

As outlined in his application, the plan includes 76,000 square feet of wine and spirits production space, as well as several small structures to accommodate a tasting room, hospitality area and marketing offices. The operation would employ 32 employees full-time, 15 part-time and five seasonally.

It would be open seven days a week for tours and tastings, and hold promotional events averaging more than once a week, most drawing no more than 100 participants, though about 10 a year would bring in between 300 and 600 maximum, the application states.

“It seems like something of this size is really an industrial land-use that seems more appropriate in city limits,” said David Bannister, executive director of the Laguna Foundation, “not in an open space area that is supposed to be a community separator.”

You can reach Staff Writer Mary ?Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@press?democrat.com. On Twitter ?@MaryCallahanB.