Santa Clara Valley wineries are already on the map, but proponents of a new County ordinance want to make it even easier for visitors and tourists to find their favorite tasting room or their next stop on their self-guided wine country tour.
The five-member Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Nov. 5 to approve a new ordinance that allows for the placement of winery wayfinding signs on County roads. Such directional signs were previously prohibited in the County sign ordinance, according to County staff.
The Nov. 5 vote was only a preliminary approval, and the item will return to the Supervisors for final adoption Nov. 26, according to County staff.
The ordinance is a long time coming, say proponents who have heightened their efforts in the last couple years to promote local wine country as a tourist attraction and economic development efforts.
“We’re just delighted,” said Jane Howard, Executive Director of the Gilroy Welcome Center. “Let’s continue to get the word out about how great our wineries are down here.”
Howard noted that Welcome Center staff were part of a committee that started the conversation with the County about allowing winery directional signs. She added the City of Gilroy’s upcoming General Plan update’s economic development component includes a section on “increased promotion and development of wine tourism.”
The Cities of Gilroy and Morgan Hill already allow and have posted roadway directional signs for wineries. Morgan Hill Economic Development Manager Edith Ramirez said the new County ordinance is crucial because most of routes between wineries are on County roads in unincorporated areas.
The exact placement of the County signs has not yet been determined. Local tourism proponents and vintners say the new County ordinance is key to establishing a “wine trail” to clearly guide motorists among the more than 20 wineries in Morgan Hill, San Martin and Gilroy.
“It’s something that we in the community have collectively been working toward and supporting for a long time, to allow a wine trail and signage program to happen,” Ramirez said.
The effort to clarify winery signage and eventually create a wine trail has been a goal of the Wineries of Santa Clara Valley association, as well as the City of Morgan Hill’s Tourism Committee.
The conceptual wine trail, hopefully to one day be labeled with the new County and existing City signage, would go in a circle from north Morgan Hill, down Monterey Road to Watsonville Road, to Hecker Pass Highway in Gilroy, and over to the east side of US 101 and back to Morgan Hill via New Avenue and other back roads – “with some spurs going off in the Southeast Gilroy area,” explained Mike Sampognaro, owner of Morgan Hill Cellars on San Pedro Avenue in east Morgan Hill.
Sampognaro has been involved in the effort to establish better signage and a wine trail for about the last year, he said.
“Our ideal situation would be some kind of freeway signage to announce (that motorists) are in Santa Clara Valley wine country,” but state authorities seem reluctant to allow such signage on the US 101 right-of-way, Sampognaro said.
“That would be good to get people aware that this is a real wine country,” Sampognaro added.
