Big victory for backers of limited Napa growth
Napa Valley’s most contentious political battleground — winery and vineyard development — has potentially reached a significant turning point after a series of key victories for proponents of limited expansion, leaving continued growth of Napa’s prized wine region uncertain.
While final votes were being cast in the midterm election on Nov. 8, Napa County’s Board of Supervisors voted to revoke a permit for one of the largest winery development proposals in the region’s history, the Mountain Peak winery, after nearly nine years of opposition.
In that election, Napa County residents chose a pair of new supervisors who activists believe will be more sympathetic to their concerns over winery development proposals.
The scope of North America’s most successful wine hub is a topic of fierce debate here. The is
sue has divided county residents into those who want to see Napa’s wine industry continue to grow and those concerned about a number of issues, such as further corporatization, the housing crisis and, above all, climate change.
“There are so many environmental issues going on in the Napa Valley that everyone is spread very thin,” said Napa resident and environmental activist Yvonne Baginski.
The most controversial project to date, Walt Ranch, received final approval in July after 17 years of resistance and appeals. It was a discouraging result for those also fighting against Mountain Peak.
Like Walt Ranch, the 40-acre site of the proposed Mountain Peak winery is set up on a narrow and windy two-lane road in the county’s rural, fire-prone hills. In 2013, the property owners submitted a permit application to build a large winery, which would produce up to 100,000 gallons of wine and accept more than 14,000 visitors each year.
But from the get-go, locals fiercely objected to the project’s scale, voicing concerns over water supply and quality, increased fire risks and potential environmental and biological harm. Months after the permit was approved in 2017, the Atlas Fire destroyed a majority of the Soda Canyon community that surrounded the Mountain Peak site and intensified the fight against it.
A group of frustrated neighbors formed the Soda Canyon Group. They appealed the permit approval and also filed a lawsuit against the county, calling for further environmental studies they believed should be required under the California Environmental Quality Act. This past March, the Napa County Superior Court stepped in, ruling that Mountain Peak must complete an environmental impact report before the project moves forward, which could delay the project significantly.
That ruling appears to have been the final straw for the developers.
Despite having made what China-based Mountain Peak owners Eric and Hua Yuan described as a “significant” financial investment, they decided to put a stop to their plans. The property, including a house and vineyard, is now up for sale and the Board of Supervisors has rescinded the permit.
“We listened to our neighbors, we heard them and we decided not to move forward with the project,” said Eric Yuan. Any path forward likely “would have been tied up in litigation for several years” and is one they “did not wish to go down,” he said.
Steven Rea, the Yuan’s former president and estate director of the Mountain Peak property and their other Napa Valley wine company, Acumen, said he and his team “did everything we could to be a responsible, considerate business,” but that the neighbors left “no room for compromise.”
The successful opponents say they hope that the Mountain Peak debate sets a precedent of requiring environmental impact reports for such proposals, especially in rural areas, in the future — something the county has rarely mandated in the past. But the outcome also reinforces a growing sentiment among members of the wine industry: to plant a vineyard or build a winery in Napa County will likely mean an extremely long and expensive battle.
“We hope this is a bellwether for the entire county,” said attorney Anthony Arger, a Soda Canyon resident and spokesperson for the neighbors’ group. “I hope other developers are taking notice of this and realizing, ‘Hey, we can’t just go in and propose to put a theme park-size winery on the top of Napa’s mountains.’ ”
Still, others will likely try, but those opposed to further development are hopeful that incoming Supervisors Anne Cottrell and Joelle Gallagher will make future fights a little easier for them. Arger believes they will bring a more “responsible development approach” to the table. Cottrell, for example, was the only member of the planning commission to vote against the Mountain Peak project back in 2014.
“Both are more thoughtful about resources and are focused on community,” said Patricia Damery, a board member of Napa Vision 2050, a coalition created to help protect Napa’s agricultural lands.
While Cottrell and Gallagher won’t make up a board majority, Arger believes that other supervisors may begin to weigh environmental concerns more than before. Supervisor Belia Ramos, for example, reversed her vote on the Mountain Peak project in 2021, when the court asked the Board of Supervisors to revisit the issue in light of information revealed following the Atlas Fire. The board voted to uphold the permit.
Activist Baginski said that about a week before the recent election, Supervisor Alfredo Pedroza publicly denounced another controversial development issue, Measure J, the first step in the redevelopment of a 157-acre plot called Green Island Vineyard to industrial use, such as wine storage warehouses. If passed, opponents feared it would lead to more urbanization of protected agricultural lands. As of Nov. 17, the measure was narrowly failing.
Rea predicts that continuing efforts to block winery development will ultimately backfire on the community and lead to more corporatization of the industry in Napa Valley. Only “billionaires,” he said, will be able to afford the litigation hurdles, while smaller wineries or farmers will no longer be able to get their foot in the door.
“They’ll only propagate more of what they propose to be fighting against,” said Rea, who recently moved from Napa Valley to Montana. “I think the soul is going out of Napa and that’s a shame.”