San Pasqual Winery Gets OK to Expand

Owners of the San Pasqual Winery won permission from the San Diego City Council on Tuesday to expand their wine-tasting facilities, despite strong protests from neighbors worried that the business will become a tourist attraction.

The council voted 6 to 2 to grant the owners a permit to expand the winery building, but added conditions to control activities at the site, limiting hours of operation, the number of “special events” and the type of retail items that can be sold.

The financially ailing winery has been operating in the city’s San Pasqual Valley agricultural preserve since 1973, but was forced to curtail its grape growing after disease killed more than half the vines several years ago and forced the importation of fruit from other areas.

Milton Fredman, president of the winery, said the firm planned to sell its facilities to a Rancho Santa Fe resident, Paul Thomas, and a Napa Valley wine baron, William Jaeger, if the permit to expand the wine-tasting room was granted.

William Barnett, speaking for Friends of the San Pasqual Valley, said the winery has been operating illegally for years because it was conducting a commercial business--wine tasting and sales--in an agricultural preserve that requires a special permit for such activities.

Neighbors said that, in the past, special events such as political rallies, 10K runs and fund-raising events have crowded the narrow rural roads with cars and disturbed the area with noise.

Council members Bob Filner and Judy McCarty voted against permitting the winery to expand its sales operations. McCarty said she does not feel that the conditions placed on the operators will protect the neighbors from disturbances.

The winery is off San Pasqual Road en route to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and several opponents of the expansion protested that it would become a stopover for visitors to the popular attraction east of Escondido.