HUFFMAN ON 2016

“I’ve been waiting for that question for months!” So exclaimed second-term U.S.
Rep. Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, last week when Debriefer got him on the phone. The question: Who are you supporting for president in 2016?

The answer may surprise readers who have already taken note of the fact that there’s a pretty heady battle shaping up in the Democratic Party over the presidential campaigns of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Bernie has been getting huge, boisterous crowds around the country with his fiery blasts of populist rhetoric and anti-corporate, up-the-people messaging. The knuckle-draggers over at the National Review
are taking Sanders and his message so seriously, they even called him a Nazi.

Huffman is a progressive Democrat whose congressional district comprises a region of the country so distinctive in the American political imagination that George Bush was once reduced to calling U.S.-born jihadi John Walker Lindh “some misguided Marin hot-tubber.”

So readers may be surprised that Huffman is all-in for Hillary Clinton, many months before the Democratic primaries get into gear. The Iowa caucus kicks it off next February; the California primary is June 7.

“Sanders is bringing some great points to the discussion,” Huffman says, “but at the end of the day, our Democratic nominee is going to be Hillary Clinton, and I’m going to support her.”

Huffman is pragmatic even as he throws a populist cheer in the direction of Sanders, a Vermont socialist who ran for Senate as an Independent, and who caucuses with the Democratic Party.

“Bernie is getting great crowds and he’s getting people excited on the left—that’s a good thing. But Hillary Clinton is going to dominate all the primaries, she’s going to start racking up delegates, and it will be clear, early on, that our nominee is going to be Secretary Clinton. But I think the good news for all of us is that she seems to be embracing some of the things Bernie is saying as well.”

All will be clear in a year. The Democratic National Convention goes down in Philadelphia next July 25–28.

So who is Huffman handicapping for the Republican Party nomination? No surprise there: “I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for Donald Trump,” says Huffman, “but we’ll probably wind up with someone more like Scott Walker.”—Tom Gogola

SNOOPY SCOOP

Last Friday, the Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center invited cast and crew of the upcoming Peanuts Movie to the museum for a meet-and-greet with the press. The animated adventure is the first time the iconic Peanuts characters have made it to the big screen.

Director Steve Martino (Horton Hears a Who!) joined screenwriter (and Schulz’s son) Craig Schulz, the cartoonist’s widow, Jean (both pictured), and four members of the voice cast—Noah Schnapp (Charlie Brown), Francesca Capaldi (the Little Red-Haired Girl), Hadley Belle Miller (Lucy van Pelt) and Mar Mar (Franklin Armstrong)—for a tour and roundtable discussion of the film.

Martino highlighted the challenge in preserving the authenticity of characters adored by millions for over half a century, while introducing them to a new generation of kids. The Peanuts Movie is scheduled for release on Nov. 6.—Charlie Swanson

Joe Wagner, 33, is the son of Napa Valley winemaker Chuck Wagner, and he sounds like a man who believes in doing the right thing.

But Wagner’s proposal to build a huge new winery, distillery and events center at Dairyman ranch off Highway 12 near Sebastopol led to a groundswell of opposition when he announced it last February.

The proposal so inflamed local residents that Padi Selwyn cofounded an advocacy group to fight it. The organization, Neighbors to Preserve Rural Sonoma County, has 1,200 followers on Facebook at last count.

Selwyn is a marketing consultant who helped start the National Bank of the Redwoods. She says she has nothing against wineries, and nothing against development per se, but with 500 wineries in the county and an unceasing push for more of them, she says, simply, “Enough is enough.”

Have we reached “peak wine” in Sonoma County?

Wagner’s intentions reflect a growing commitment to greater sustainability being promoted by wine industry–supporting organizations such as Sonoma County Winegrowers. But critics say it’s all talk, no sustainability.

Earlier this month, the organization ran ads in local media outlets, including the Bohemian, to promote its sustainable practices, and the response was as quick as it was ferociously dismissive. Critics included former Sonoma County supervisor Ernie Carpenter, who accused some wineries of green-washing environmental impacts in an opinion piece in the Press Democrat. Wagner is not a member of the trade group.

“The advertisement we published in local newspapers in the county was paid for by local Sonoma County wine-grape growers who are proud of our sustainability program and want to share the effort with the local community,” says Sean Carroll, director of marketing and communications for Sonoma Winegrowers. “No public funds or grant money was used.”

Still, the ad rankled some residents who see Sonoma County transforming into a wine-soaked Disneyland for tourists.

And the Dairyman proposal, Selwyn argues, represents the worst of the transformation: wrong size, wrong place, wrong time. Wagner’s plan is to produce 500,000 cases of wine and 250,000 cases of apple brandy a year, on a 68-acre parcel. That will mean many tanker trucks and the traffic that comes with them, since Dairyman can only grow a fraction of the necessary fruit on-site.

A proposed driveway at the new winery would cross the popular Joe Rodota Trail, used daily by hundreds of cyclists and pedestrians.

The proposed events center has drawn the most ire from critics, who speak of unpermitted food service, traffic congestion, drunken drivers making the roads unsafe, and negative environmental impacts on the Laguna de Santa Rosa.

Through its advertising and sympathetic tourism bureaucracy, Big Wine continues to push the mythical image of the small family winery, even as Wagner, for example, just sold his Meiomi label to Constellation Brands, a giant out-of-state company, for $315 million.

Wagner says he was surprised by the pushback to his proposal, but has agreed to do an environmental impact report to mollify his critics. He says he wants to answer everyone’s questions about his proposal, and doesn’t want “there to be people who think this is a bad deal.”

Wagner says his proposal is a great use of the property—an “old dilapidated dairy that is going to go from industrial to light-industrial agricultural use.”

The proposed turn-off onto Highway 12 east of Llano Road is one of the reasons he bought it. “It’s a main thoroughfare, it’s not a county road,” Wagner says. The property has been used for concrete pumping and gypsum mixing, so “it is not suitable to be restored to its natural habitat,” he says.

Wagner bought the property for
$4.5 million to provide a home for his higher-tier Belle Glos label and research and development projects. He expects to grow 6,500 grape vines on the site and will use tertiary treated wastewater from the county for irrigation. They’ll recycle wastewater on-site.

“The technology that’s been coming out over the last decade has been phenomenal” for water reuse, says Wagner. Water for winemaking will be pumped from wells.

Wagner contested an oft-repeated criticism of winemaking’s strain on water supplies—that it takes 30 gallons of water to make a glass of wine. More typical is six to seven gallons to produce a single gallon of wine, says Wagner, who adds that he has “brought it down to lower than two gallons.”

Regardless, residents are increasingly asking a question that transcends Wagner’s plans: How many wineries are too
many?