The Santa Barbara Vintners Association only has about 30 percent of the county wineries as members. Most members are the large wineries, several of which are owned by billionaires. The Vintners Association is asking the Board of Supervisors to approve the Vintners’ Wine Preserve which will force consumers who buy wine, merchandise etc. from S.B. wineries to pay an additional one percent of their wine purchases for the wineries’ marketing and lobbying. This payment is forced by the government — the county supervisors. The consumer who is footing this bill has no say about the speech — marketing and lobbying — for which these funds will be used.
Who is pushing the Wine Preserve? It is the large wineries who want to market their S.B. County wines nationally. There is something rich about forcing your customers to pay for the advertising of your wine that they are buying.
The Wine Berserkers is an online community composed of those in the wine business and wine-centric consumers. Earlier this year a thread was started about the Wine Preserve. The initial responses, especially from consumers, were quite critical and damning. One of the Vintners Association staff jumped on the thread to promote the Wine Preserve and touted its success elsewhere — especially citing Temecula. He got shredded. The incoming was so bad he dropped out of the thread. One of the small S.B. winery owners, who is often a cheerleader for SB County wines on Wine Berserkers, and who is well liked by Berserker folks, picked up the cudgel and tried to defend the Wine Preserve. Again, the incoming was unanimously negative. After doing his best this advocate raised the white flag and said he would reimburse his customers the one percent fee.