January 2, 2002
What's in a name? Everything!In Santa Barbara County, wine grapes are a big deal! At $90 million, wine grapes are just behind broccoli at about $96 million in crop value. But nobody gives a damn about broccoli. It's a vegetable you pick up at Vons, and steam it or dip it raw into your onion soup dip. In the produce department, nobody ever ponders, "is this broccoli from the Santa Ynez Valley, Santa Rita Hills, or the Santa Maria Valley." Broccoli growers could probably bore people to tears with minutia about broccoli, but, believe me, consumers don't give a damn!
What make grape growing different from the rest of agriculture is the fact that many consumers-sometimes to the point of ad nauseum, I might add-and philosophers and writers and poets going back to the Roman times, people like Pliny, and Epicurius, wax poetic over the fruit of the vine. For well over two millenia, physicians, physicists, philosophers, poets, even butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers consider wine a big deal. It has been the subject of thousands of books, essays and poems over the centuries! There are even consumer magazines on wine.
Wine growing (as grape growing and winemaking is sometimes called) is what I call glamour agribusiness, and that differentiates it from most other agriculture.
So this all brings us to the possible split of Santa Barbara County!
According to the "Economic Impact of the Santa Barbara County Wine and Wine Grape Industries" published in November, 2001 by MKF Research, the retail value of Santa Barbara County wine produced in the year 2000 was $160 million, wine-related wages paid in the county was $35 million and taxes paid was $9.5 million. (For a copy of this detailed report I suggest you contact Michael Perry, the Executive Director of the Santa Barbara County Vintners' Association.)
So in the event of a county split, the north would inherit all this agriculture and tax base- the lion's share of the county's glamour agribusiness. Two wineries out of the 60 total are located in Santa Barbara. And all of the 18,791 acres planted to wine grapes would be located in the new county!
What's In A Name?
This brings me to two issues-important issues-one of which I have addressed before. And both address the issue of name.
First, the name "Santa Barbara County" is well established and highly respected by wine consumers. When the county is split, producers will no longer be able to use that name.
In the late 80s there was an attempt to establish a new viticultural area which embraced the Santa Ynez Valley, Santa Maria Valley and parts of southern San Luis Obispo County. After a lot of fighting among the growers and wineries, the name "Santa Barbara Coast" was chosen. Spearheading the movement was Beringer Wine Estates, parent company of Meridian Vineyards. Michael Moone, then head of Wine World argued that the name Santa Barbara had panache, pizzazz. It's a name wine consumers in Chicago would recognize; people in that part of the world think "Central Coast" is Central Valley because they don't know California geography. For a number of reasons, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms denied the appellation though.
I have argued before and I will do it now: There's real name recognition and high regard for the name "Santa Barbara", especially on a bottle of wine. And the growers in this part of the world should develop a name that includes that marque now, and file for AVA (American Viticultural Area) status with BATF! Perhaps a name like "Santa Barbara Viticultural Areas" would work-an appellation that would overlay on the current recognized appellations in the county.
As an almost four year resident of north county, this leads me to the second issue. Why call the new county Los Padres? Yuck! Who "cast in stone" that Los Padres would be the name? And why? LosPadres County on a bottle of local wine would stink, and I believe that $160 million retail figure will decline. Wines with "Los Padres County" on the label will be no more sought after that wines with "El Dorado County" on the label. It has taken a quarter century with a lot of hard, committed work to establish our wine industry. It will take at least that long, I think, to establish a new county name, and it might never happen! Look what happened when Datsun changed its name to Nissan; the car fell off the face of the earth.
What's wrong with a name like Santa Maria County? My choice, however, would be La Purisima County. The name comes from the beautiful Mission near Lompoc and the hills that separate the Santa Rita Valley from the Los Alamos Valley. The word itself is Latin for purest-a great concept, by-the-way, especially when applied to the great wine grapes and wines being produced in our part of the world! Let's get over "Los Padres" and choose something with panache. I vote for "Purisima" or "La Purisima."
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More accolades for our part of the world! Robert M. Parker, Jr. is probably the most influential wine writer in America. In his "Wine Advocate" year-end issue, he has named 18 wine personalities for the year 2001. On the list, only three were Americans, and all from San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara Counties-John Alban of Alban Vineyards in the Edna Valley, Brian Talley of Talley Vineyards in the Arroyo Grande Valley appellation, and Brewer-Clifton of Santa Barbara County's new Santa Rita Hills appellation.
Times colunist Bob Senn lives in the Los Alamos Valley and owns the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium.
