May 2, 2001
Livermore Valley-Part TwoLast month I chronicled my trip up to the Livermore Valley in Alameda County east of the Bay Area. Good friend and home winemaker Doug Coleman and I took three days off to visit the area. As I mentioned in last month's column, the highlight of the trip was lunch at Wente Vineyards Restaurant with its 24 page wine list and perfectly prepared and presented fare. Lunch al fresco at that restaurant is an experience I will never forget and since the last column I have gotten the menu framed.
The Livermore Valley has been producing fine wine since the early 1880s--primarily from the venerable producers Wente and Concannon. Concannon has long been regarded as producing the benchmark petite sirah here in California.
With the burgeoning Silicon Valley and the sprawling suburbs of San Jose and the south bay, there has been intense pressure to develop the pristine Livermore Valley. How has their local area handled this affront? I will tell you how the area has handled growth and preservation of agricultural land. It might serve as a model of us here in Santa Barbara County.
As an aside, having grown up in the Santa Clara Valley, a venerable grape growing appellation in its own right, every time I look at the new grape acreage census, statistics collected by the Department of Food and Agriculture, I sadly notice a shrinkage--vineyard land replaced with concrete, tract houses, sidewalks and street lights encroaching urbanization!
Here is what the Livermore Valley is doing.
The South Livermore Valley Area Plan creates a policy framework for Alameda County and the cities of Pleasanton and Livermore to work with landowners, citizen groups, developers and viticulturalists to rejuvenate the South Livermore Valley as a premium wine producing area.
The plan's intent is to preserve the remaining vineyards and wineries in the area, enhance the recognition and image of the area as an important premium wine producing region in California, create incentives for investment and expansion of vineyards and other cultivated agriculture, and coordinate the policies of Alameda County, Pleasanton and Livermore so these goals can be achieved.
Recognizing that agriculture cannot, on its own, compete with urban development and the speculation that precedes it, the Plan directs new residential development to appropriate locations. Additionally, the Plan's policies encourage new wineries and other tourist related projects to help promote the area as a widely recognized wine region.
Does this sound like Santa Barbara County? Here we have at least three members of the Board of Supervisors here who appear downright hostile to winery, vineyard and agricultural development.
In a nutshell, Santa Barbara, Goleta and the south county have no agriculture, and its citizenry, by-and-large, hates tourists, even though tourism is Santa Barbara's largest industry. Tourists visiting Santa Barbara are referred to as "touroids" or "tourons" to their backs in stores in downtown Santa Barbara. And the screwball city government there has the streets in perennial pandemonium during high season. Wouldn't you think after decades of creating this craziness, Public Works would get it together and tear up streets in off- season? You come to this stark realization, as I have, after visiting other places in the world--San Francisco, the Livermore Valley, Reno, San Antonio, Texas, Omaha, Nebraska!
In the middle county--the Santa Ynez Valley--many residents fear it will become southern California's next Napa, and you have an element which wants a moratorium on future winery and vineyard development altogether. I don't understand that thinking. Ag preservation and development keeps the terrain rural. For me, I would prefer vineyard vistas to houses dotting the terrain any day!
Up here in the north county-home of the greatest pinot noir and best barbecue cuisine in the New World, agriculture thrives, and with no thanks to the Board of Supervisors.
The Livermore plan is based on the premise that further development within the area should contribute directly to the enhancement of viticulture and other cultivated agriculture in the South Livermore Valley. The plan establishes three separate and independent methods of encouraging agricultural expansion.
First, economic incentives are provided to expand viticultural acreage.
Second, specific mitigation measures are required for any urban development so that it will substantially contribute to the Plan goals.
Third, an agricultural land trust capable of accepting donations or purchasing easements has been established to permanently protect productive agricultural lands.
As several wine producers explained it to me, when a developer develops a housing project, an acre of ag land has to be set aside for every acre developed.
Readers who might want more information on Livermore's plan should contact Charles Drummond of Concannon Vineyard who gave me a copy of the Plan. Call him at (925) 456-2510.
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In a related note, in the May/June 2001 issue of "Expedia Travels" magazine, wine writer Richard Nalley has written "Santa Barbara wine country has sexy pinot noir, great unfancy food, wild west scenery--and no attitude" in a hard-hitting wine piece on the county titled "The Next Napa?" Good reading material.
Bon appetit!
Bob Senn lives in the Los Alamos Valley and owns the Los Olivos Wine & Spirits Emporium.
