Getting juiced at wine tastings
LOS OLIVOS, CALIF. -- — The man did not seem to be a serious student of wine. Disheveled, unshaven and reeking of booze, he demanded a glass, rested his head on the tasting-room counter and loudly moaned. Knocking over a "wet floor" sign and lurching into displays, he stumbled into eight wineries in one afternoon last week, and six refused him service.
It was a decent outcome for the undercover deputy from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department, who had gone to the lengths of gargling with Jack Daniels and spritzing it on his clothes. He didn't issue any citations, but his sting operation was part of a broad effort to address a growing concern in the wine industry.
While buses and stretch limos cruising through wine country keep tipsy tourists from driving, wineries in California and across the nation blame them for bringing boisterous, inebriated crowds to venues that would sooner draw quiet sippers and lavish spenders.
"It's a pervasive problem," said Craig Root, a tasting-room consultant based in the Napa Valley town of St. Helena. "The limo crowd appears to have great demographics on the surface, but some of them tend to -- and there's no polite way to put this -- they tend to just get juiced."
The latest buzz in the industry comes from the Temecula Valley, where 21 winery owners have imposed stiff new rules requiring that transportation companies police the hordes of customers they bring to the valley on a typical weekend.
Before the rules took effect in November, the scene was becoming increasingly raucous, officials said. Bachelorette parties and birthday celebrations would devolve into loud, obnoxious group binges.
"People would show up in costumes," said Tomi Arbogast, director of the Temecula Valley Winegrowers Assn. "It was a telltale sign their mission was a little different."
Throwing up in the shrubbery, shouting, singing, flinging off garments -- these are not signs of exuberance over the arrival of the Beaujolais Nouveau.
"Things like that happen in Vegas," Arbogast said. "We don't want them happening here."
The Temecula growers were not the first to aim the grapes of wrath at companies driving drunks to their doorsteps.
In Napa County, a number of wineries have simply put out signs announcing: "No limos." Unfortunately, the signs have a tendency to disappear, said Michael Korson, an investigator for the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission.
