Battle Brewing Over Walla Walla Wine
As a fifth-generation farmer in the Walla Walla Valley, Phil Reser considers himself the real deal, not one of those “hobby” guys growing grapes and opening a winery.
“It’s a very touchy subject with a lot of us who are really true farmers, who have been here for generations and worked the land, whose families fought for this ground,” Reser said.
Michael Murr, who grew up in Walla Walla and now lives in Rye, N.Y., takes exception to the notion that any investment of $10 million to $15 million in a vineyard and estate winery could ever be considered a mere pastime.
“When you commit this kind of capital, it’s not a hobby,” Murr said.
Murr’s proposal to build a small winery with a tasting room in a planned 300-acre vineyard--in an area zoned exclusively for agriculture--has touched off a passionate and multilayered debate in the pastoral foothills of the Blue Mountains.
As the old farm economy clashes with the new, neighbors and friends have argued about property rights and government regulation, and the lure of tourism versus the right to farm.
In some ways, the wine industry is the goose that laid the golden egg here, rivaling those famous sweet onions for agricultural identity. And while no one wants to see that goose cooked, there are plenty who’d like to see it penned up.
“This has been a shock to me,” said Norm McKibben, chairman of the Washington Wine Commission and a partner in the vineyard where Murr wants to develop the winery. “We’ve been working toward getting the valley recognized as a center for wineries. It’s something everybody should be elated about.”
The whole idea of Walla Walla County’s 21,000-acre exclusive agriculture zone--the only such zone in the state--was to block commercial development and retain the rural character of the land.
Last November, Murr asked county planners for a zoning amendment that would allow him to build his winery and tasting room in the zone. The planning commission rejected his request, but in April, county commissioners overturned the decision in a meeting that was later determined to be illegal for lack of public notice.
The commission approved the zoning amendment again on June 26. Murr must still obtain a conditional use permit from the planning commission.
Opponents argued that Murr’s winery and tasting room plans were not all that different from someone trying to build a McDonald’s in the zone just because he had a few cows.
It’s the first step, they said, toward full-scale development, traffic congestion, overuse of water and further impediments to their ability to farm without city-style complaints about the dust, odor and chemicals.
“I think the opposition is based on a profound and debilitating fear of change, even though that change is clearly in the overall interest of the whole community,” Murr said.
Bart Nelson, a landowner in the zone and president of Nelson Irrigation Corp., opposed the amendment.
“The wine industry is a tremendous economic plus for Walla Walla County,” he said. “I’m very supportive of it. I just think they ought to be somewhere else,” such as a storefront downtown.
The wine industry has grown with champagne cork-popping speed in Washington state in the last five years, and the Walla Walla Valley is one of its premier appellations.
“The industry has grown so fast that it’s basically created a little bit of caution on the part of a few people,” said Martin Clubb, president of the Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance and owner of the prestigious L’Ecole No. 41 winery in nearby Lowden.
But in the end, Clubb predicts, the positives of developing Walla Walla as a tourist destination featuring the region’s premium wines will far outweigh the negatives.
In the 1980s, the Walla Walla area had three wineries, including Clubb’s L’Ecole No. 41. By 1990, they numbered about a half-dozen. The county now has 30 bonded wineries and another dozen that have applied for or are working on getting their commercial permits, Clubb said.
And the economic impact is probably well over $100 million in this county of 55,000 people, he said.
The county, which is spending more than $200,000 a year to promote tourism, gets one or two applications per month on average to open new wineries, said County Commissioner Pam Ray.
A seven-member, commission-appointed advisory committee is being formed this month for planning.
“We want to do it right. We don’t want to do it so there are helter-skelter wineries without proper regulation,” Ray said.
“We want the wine industry to know what the rules are when they come in here, and we want to make sure that we have planned appropriately. We don’t want to throw these wineries and tasting rooms in where it would impact our infrastructure, water issues and road issues.”
At stake in the amendment dispute has been a fundamental property rights issue, said Murr’s lawyer, Jim Hayner of Walla Walla. Should your neighbors be able to tell you what you can and cannot do with your land, even if the use is considered compatible with the property?
“There is a group of people in this particular area who are very passionate about trying to maintain a lifestyle they believe is important--and imposing that lifestyle on others as well,” he said.
Reser believes the land he lives on is special, with good soil, sufficient moisture and great crop yields. He doesn’t want to see it taken out of production by opening the door to commercial development or what he calls hobby farms.
He fears it would mean higher taxes and outside investment by money that won’t stay long in Walla Walla County, and he worries a lot about water, the depletion of the aquifer running beneath the zone.
“To me there’s no resolving this issue,” he said. “Right now, this thing is just a keg of dynamite. It has totally changed the whole structure of everything in one of the most prime agricultural areas in the land.”
