Been busy the past few weeks working on gathering information on the extremely time consuming process of filing a county use permit. A county issued use permit is the keystone of the complicated winery approval process that ends with the TTB. We’re fortunate that Sonoma County isn’t quite as inhospitable to new wineries as Napa (though the owner of former So. Co. winery Rabbit Ridge has seen to it that the process is much more onerous than it once was). Ultimately however, the county will have a say in pretty much every aspect of the winery, including design and aesthetics since we are in a designated scenic area.

For those following along at home, I started the process by taking a couple classes taught by compliance professionals at Sonoma State: one on federal requirements for starting a winery, and the other on state and local. Some good, immediately useful information was given (like, for instance, that the county calculates total expected gallons of wastewater produced by multiplying the number of gallons of wine produced by 1.5). But the biggest benefit of the classes was the overview of the process that was provided. Instead of blindly relying on consultants, I have at least some sense of the process and the difficulties involved.

However, you can learn quite a bit about your county’s processes by simply going to the county permit and resource management building and having them pull the files on a couple recently completed wineries. I read through a couple of the files and took notes on the difficulties that my neighbors encountered and how they were resolved.

On Monday we visited with our architect, Del Starrett, and roughed up an idea of the direction we want to go in terms of design. Next week a topographer will come out and survey the proposed site. After that Del will draft some initial elevations and floor plans, which we will use for the use permit application and design review.

The entire use permit process should take close to a year to complete. From what I’ve seen, the conditions that the county attaches to such permits can stretch on for pages, sometimes in excess of 50 or 60 line items. God and the county willing, we should break ground next spring.

Should be an interesting year. When I have the elevations in hand, I’ll post them here.