Jericho Canyon Vineyard winery growth requests approved by Napa County

Jericho Canyon Vineyard winery accomplished the dual goals of cleaning up code violations and securing visitor increases as well as various other requests that went even further.

That's hardly a given before the Napa County Planning Commission. In some code compliance cases, the commission decides a winery asking for forgiveness should wait before asking for additional growth.

"I think I have probably been the most outspoken about the issue of granting approvals beyond the compliance issue," Commissioner Dave Whitmer said during the July 20 hearing.

But after hearing the Jericho Canyon Vineyard story, he and other commissioners decided by unanimous vote that the winery's growth requests had merit.

"I find myself in a place to understand this application and its importance to this family and their business moving forward," Whitmer said. "I'm in a place where I feel it's appropriate to support it."

Jericho Canyon Vineyard is located on 131 acres at 3320 Old Lawley Toll Rd. near Calistoga. The Bleecher family founded the operation about 30 years ago.

Marla Bleecher recalled how her husband Dale was doing financial work in San Francisco and she was raising three children in San Mateo. They decided they wanted to live a different life and moved the family to Napa Valley after buying the Jericho Canyon land beneath Mount St. Helena and the volcanic Palisades.

"At the time, we knew absolutely nothing about what we were getting into," Marla Bleecher said. "We didn't know how to grow grapes. We didn't know anything about growing grapes. And it had been a cattle ranch."

Dale Bleecher went to Napa Valley College and Santa Rosa Junior College to learn about terraced vineyards and irrigation. They sold their grapes for wine and in 2006 completed a winery of their own.

The Jericho Canyon Vineyard use permit allows for up to 15 visitors a week and the winery has hosted up to 126 visitors a week, a county report said.

"When we designed the winery, we didn't even design in a tasting room," Dale Bleecher told the commission. "Somehow we thought we'd be able to sell wine in some other way."

But as the number of wine distributors shrunk, having visitors come to the winery grew in importance.

The winery doesn't really get huge amounts of traffic coming in because it is off the beaten path and has by-appointment-only tastings. But sometimes, requests come for large groups, Dale Bleecher said.

"Because we are struggling to get visitors, it was very difficult to say 'no' when somebody we were working with asked us to host their groups," he said.

Commissioners agreed to legalize the existing tasting room visitation. Beyond that, it agreed the winery can have up to 500 tasting room visitors a week, but no more than 13,800 annually.

Another violation corrected is recognizing the 6,715 square feet of caves, compared to the 4,100 square feet in the original use permit.

"Basically, we designed our cave, Marla and I, sitting in a restaurant (writing) on a napkin. And it was just two bore holes with a crossover, very little imagination," Dale Bleecher said.

During construction, the builder suggested improvements, such as saying one crossover was too little for twin 140-foot bore holes. He relied on this advice without giving much thought to the use permit, Dale Bleecher said.

Commissioner Anne Cottrell said cave plans can change when the actual building takes place and issues arise.

"I don't think that's a unique situation. We have heard that before," Cottrell said.

Beyond correcting the cave violation, commissioners approved increasing the cave space to 22,078 square feet comprised of about 19,600 square feet of production space and 2,500 square feet of hospitality space.

Commissioner Joelle Gallagher zeroed in on water use figures, trying to make sense of them amid apparently conflicting figures. At the end of the day, the winery will save water in part by using treated, processed wastewater for landscape irrigation.

Amid a drought, commissioners welcomed the news.

"Seeing the water usage actually decline because of the reused water I think is really key to the application and to the project," Gallagher said.

Attorney Thomas Carey on behalf of Jericho Canyon Vineyard noted the commission is sometimes reluctant to do more than legalize violations. But the application for this project was begun two years before the county started the amnesty program in 2019, he said.

"I want to emphasize this is not an attempt to get a bonus out of the amnesty program. This is something that happened along the away," he said.

The winery's future expansion plans are in two phases. Winemaker Nicholas Bleecher told commissioners the winery has worked on its requests for seven years. He clearly wanted to take care of everything at once.

"Thinking about expansion in 2030, to be back here again is a really difficult concept to get through our heads to do that, because it's difficult and its exhausting," he said.

In this case, commissioners legalized the violations and granted a range of extra requests as well. Among them was increasing wine production from 20,000 gallons annually to 50,000 gallons annually and converting a barn into a hospitality building.

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