What does the verb “to plant” actually mean? The answer may be decided in a California courtroom, with huge implications for the future of Napa Valley.
A successful high-end winemaker filed an interesting lawsuit against Napa County last week, claiming that it doesn’t have the right to stop him from installing a vineyard on a hillside because he didn’t move any earth to do it.
The suit also might presage more looming fights about fire damage in wine country. The vintner, Jayson Woodbridge of Hundred Acre, claims that the city wants him to restore vegetation that burned in the Glass Fire with similar trees that would be at risk in another fire.
I tried to reach Woodbridge to learn more details about the vineyard, but he asked for a list of questions and then didn’t respond to them. It’s a shame, because I have wine-geek questions about this planting method and I’m sure others will too. If Woodbridge prevails legally, he might have found a way around Napa County’s agricultural preserve laws that were intended to prevent new planting on slopes over 30 percent.
The dispute has two main parts. Woodbridge removed what he called dead trees and stumps that had been killed in the fire. He claims Napa County wants him to prepare and file a restoration plan for revegetating the property, but he says he shouldn’t have to do so because the fire, not him, killed the trees.
The second main dispute is the one that other wineries constrained by local environmental laws anywhere in California will be watching. It’s technical, both regarding viticulture and the law itself, and interesting.
Woodbridge deconstructs the language of Napa Valley’s agricultural preserve law that prevents planting on hillsides with a slope over 30 percent.
What he says he did was plant – sorry, not “plant,” um, create? – a vineyard by using pots with no bottoms; in other words, he exposed a vine directly to the soil.
From the lawsuit: “The method involves placing a small, bottomless vessel on the ground, and filling that vessel with compost and a single rootstock. The rootstock then grows through the compost and roots into the soil without any tilling, drilling, or other soil disturbing activities. In other words, the layout of the vineyard would involve no ‘earthmoving or earth-disturbing activity’ as that phrase is defined by the Section 18.108.030 of the Conservation Regulations, and would not constitute ‘planting’ as that term is commonly used because the rootstock would not be put or set in the ground, but instead would naturally grow into it.”
It’s a bold lawsuit and if it succeeds, it’s a big deal, because a lot of Napa Valley landowners will see their property increase in value as previously “unplantable” areas might be opened up to cultivation.
The other part is important to other wineries as well. Woodbridge claims the county accused him of “removing at least 30 percent of vegetation canopy,” and demanded that he “‘hire a professional biologist or botanist the prepare a vegetation mapping of the entire property,’ even though the Glass Fire left virtually no vegetation on the Property”.
“One year after the Glass Fire, none of the fire-killed trees and stumps on the Property exhibited any signs of recovery, and none provided any canopy coverage whatsoever,” the lawsuit reads. “In order to remediate this environmentally unacceptable condition, in or around late September or early October 2021, Plaintiff began removing the remains of those fire-killed trees and stumps from a small portion of the Property nearest to the roadway and surviving structures. None of that activity involved any excavation. Indeed, no excavation was necessary – the tree and stump remains located on the Property were so thoroughly burned through that those remains could simply be picked up or pushed over, and carried away.”
If Napa County is indeed cracking down on the removal of burned-out trees, other wineries will be affected.
But there’s always another side to lawsuit stories, and when the defendant is the county itself, it’s hard to learn what that side is. I tried to get comment from David Morrison, Napa County’s planning director, because I thought he might be best equipped to discuss the regulations, but he did not respond.
You can tell from the lawsuit that Woodbridge and the county aren’t on good terms. On May 11, the county asked to inspect Woodbridge’s experimental planting and he refused to allow it.
Then on June 13, the lawsuit claims two things: that the county posted a “Stop Work” order for the vineyard, but that Woodbridge didn’t actually receive it.
On June 22, the county demanded that Woodbridge schedule a meeting to discuss his plans for the parcel and apply for an Erosion Control Plan. If Woodbridge followed those orders in any way, it’s not recorded in the lawsuit. The lawsuit says that by August Woodbridge could see that the bottomless-pot plan was working so he – um – “created” more vines in the ground, but not over a huge area: just one-third of an acre. The county demanded an inspection in September and it’s not clear if Woodbridge permitted it.
If you haven’t heard of Woodbridge’s Hundred Acre, it’s because you’re not spending enough money on wine. Most Hundred Acre wines sell for more than $600 a bottle and they have received 25 100-point scores from the Wine Advocate. So he has the deep pockets to fight the county. That said, half of Napa County’s official government day is probably spent dealing with angry billionaires who want to know why they can’t plant on that beautiful hillside they just bought. They’ll be watching this one and so will we.
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