photo credit: Michelle Marques
Vineyards in Sonoma County's Dry Creek Valley

Sonoma County's wine industry is facing significant challenges, in line with global declines in wine sales, and shifting consumer trends.

Local vintners and grape growers are joining forces to explore a possible solution for the wine and ag sector. Industry leaders have formed a steering committee to explore creating a Sonoma County Wine Improvement District, or WID.

Prema Kerollis is the co-founder and general manager of Three Sticks Winery in Sonoma. She is the current board president for Sonoma County Vintners. Kerollis says a special district would provide stable and strategic funding for the long-term strength and sustainability of Sonoma County’s wine and agricultural economy.

“The idea is to sort of unify our resources and to be able to really position Sonoma and recover some of the businesses lost, the visitorship that is down, to reinvigorate our region's wine industry via marketing programs and dollars that are focused on that,” said Kerollis.

Wine improvement districts were established under California law in 1994, allowing wine regions to pool funds for marketing and promotion efforts. Kerollis says the money is generated through self-imposed assessments.

“The percentage hasn't been selected, but I would say sort of between 1- and 2-percent on direct-to-consumer sales,” Kerollis said. “So it does not include wholesales or restaurant sales or wine shops, you know, anything that goes through the wholesale side of the business is not included.”

When asked whether smaller, boutique wineries that do the majority of their business through direct-to-consumer sales would face a bigger burden than large wineries, Kerollis says: “The assessment is something that would be passed on to the consumer. The winery itself wouldn't pay the dollars. It’s a pass-through similar to the health care tax in San Francisco on, in restaurants and I suppose if a winery chose to pay the assessment themselves and rather than include that on their receipts, that could be a burden.”

A press release by the Sonoma County Winegrowers and Sonoma County Vintners says the wine improvement district would eliminate duplication, leverage strengths, and maximize every dollar invested in the local wine industry. Several California regions, including Temecula Valley and Santa Barbara, have already implemented WIDs.

Not everyone is excited about the idea of a Wine Improvement District, however. Winemaker Adam Lee cofounded Siduri Wines in the 1990s and now makes wine for his own label Clarice Wine Company. He has started a Change.org petition to oppose a WID in Sonoma County.

“The Wine Growers are saying that what we're doing is clearly not working because visitorship and wine sales are down,” said Lee. “And they're saying we want more money for it, but they're not giving us any new proposals as to what to do. So why in the world are we going to throw more money at something that's not working? To me, I don't know that funding is the problem. I think lack of new ideas is the problem.”

Lee says he is concerned that those in the industry with bigger pockets will get final say.

“Ultimately, it's going to be voted on by Sonoma County wine growers, but not every winery gets one vote. It's based on how much you have in the way of sales. So the people who have more sales get more votes than the people who have less sales. And then it goes to the Board of Supervisors and to the local city councils,” said Lee.

Lee says recently he's been approached by a lot of people asking for his opinion on the idea of a Sonoma County Wine Improvement District, which prompted him to create the online petition.

“I honestly wanted to give this a little more time, attend a meeting, be a bit more involved, but the more and more I heard about this, the more this seemed like it was being pushed in a very quick way to try to go ahead and make this happen. So actually I decided over this past weekend to go ahead and get it out there,” Lee said.

The petition had nearly 400 signatures as of Wednesday evening, July 30th.