Bringing Wineries Back in Los Angeles

The annual grape harvest has been bittersweet for Malibu Hills Vineyard owner George Rosenthal.

While there is pride in knowing his crop will be made into cabernet, merlot and chardonnay, there is frustration in knowing he has to ship his grapes to a production facility four hours north, in San Luis Obispo County.

Under a Prohibition-era rule, winemaking is illegal in unincorporated parts of Los Angeles County--which includes wide swaths of the Santa Monica Mountains and Antelope Valley.

“It has been an arduous task to pick grapes early in the morning, load them into refrigerated trucks and drive 170 miles so that the grapes can be crushed on the day they were harvested,” Rosenthal said. “In the rest of California, it’s right in the immediate neighborhood.”

But after two years of pressing the county for change, it appears that Rosenthal finally may be able to turn his 23-acre mountain vineyard into a full-fledged winery.

The Los Angeles County Regional Planning Board voted 3 to 0 on Wednesday to establish new rules on wine production in agricultural lands in unincorporated areas.

The measure goes to the county Board of Supervisors on Sept. 26, where

officials say little opposition is expected.

The new rules would allow each vintner to produce as much as 5,000 gallons of wine--or about 25,000 bottles--annually in “heavy” agricultural zones or land designated for “resort and recreation.”

Those seeking to produce more than 5,000 gallons would need to obtain conditional use permits, requiring a public hearing, and then would be limited to producing 50,000 gallons.

Industry experts say the measure could pave the way for small “boutique wineries” to pop up in mountain and desert areas. And in so doing, the change in the law could go a long way toward promoting the local industry.

While it is no Sonoma or even Santa Barbara when it comes to wine production, Los Angeles County is big on consumption. It is the largest metropolitan wine market in the United States, said Gladys Horiuchi of the San Francisco-based Wine Institute.

“Eleven million people visit California wine regions and wineries, half of which are small, family-owned operations that make about 5,000 cases or less,” Horiuchi said. “Certainly, having more wineries in Los Angeles will make it more accessible for people who are interested in wine.”

Cyndee Donato, who runs the 5-acre Antelope Valley Winery in Lancaster, said the county’s prohibition has stifled the local industry.

“The change is way past due,” said Donato, whose own business hasn’t been affected because it is in an incorporated city. “The rules are archaic and prevented the growth of the wine industry here in the way it’s been proliferating throughout the state for years now.”

There are about a dozen wineries in the Los Angeles area, but all are in incorporated cities, said Annie Lin of the county planning board.

In unincorporated areas, growers must ship their grapes out of the area before they can be crushed and bottled.

Los Angeles was once one of the primary areas for production of California wine, beginning in the 1700s when settlers led by Spanish missionaries planted grapes as they spread along the California coast, Lin said.

Over the next century, Los Angeles County became a center for winemaking --growing from 103 vineyards with 200,000 vines in 1850 to 436 vineyards with about 5.2 million vines by 1879.

But Prohibition, development and disease devastated local winemakers by the 1920s. In 1950, zoning laws barred wineries in agricultural areas, Lin said.

Those rules went virtually unchallenged until Rosenthal and other vintners began complaining to county Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Mike D. Antonovich.

“I told [Yaroslavsky] we had to

ship our grapes out of the county to make wine, and that Los Angeles County in its zoning regulation was unique to the rest of California, where they allowed wineries in concert with vineyards,” said Rosenthal.

The supervisors asked planners to revamp the rules.

If the supervisors pass the measure in September, it will be a victory to savor, like fine wine, Rosenthal said.

“There’s a continuity to winemaking from the vine to the grapes and ultimately to the bottle, which will be there for generations later to enjoy,” he said. “This will give us and local residents the opportunity see that in action.”