Santa Barbara County’s Wine BID Abandoned

The potential silver-bullet solution to funding Santa Barbara County wine country’s perpetual marketing woes has been unloaded, as the proposed 1 percent fee on bottle sales is now off the table. 

With opposition to the idea rising, and even a preemptive lawsuit threatened, the board of the Santa Barbara County Vintners Association voted on Wednesday night to abort their mission, which has been in the works for two years. Had they been able to create a countywide business improvement district, or BID, the association expected to raise $1 million more annually, more than doubling its current budget. It would have been the first time the BID model, which is common in tourism and retail industries, was applied to a wine region.  

The extra money, the association argued, would have put them on better footing to battle for attention, tourists, and sales against regions such as Napa, Sonoma, Paso Robles, and Temecula. In those wine countries, the regional associations enjoy bigger marketing budgets because a greater percentage of the area’s wineries sign on as members and are also willing to pay higher dues than what’s charged in Santa Barbara.