Napa County approves Hourglass Winery expansion, new tasting room after Glass Fire damage
Hourglass Winery, which suffered extensive damage during the 2020 Glass Fire near Calistoga, can increase wine production, build a new tasting room and host more visitors.
The Napa County Planning Commission on Feb. 4 approved Hourglass’ proposal with a 4-0 vote.
Hourglass owner Jeff Smith said the recovery from the Glass Fire has been “enormously difficult.”
Having the winery’s application approved, Smith told the Planning Commission “would be an enormous step forward for my family and for the business.”
Hourglass sought to boost annual wine production from 30,000 to 60,000 gallons and win permission to welcome up to 10,370 visitors a year – an increase of 3,150 visitors – to its Lommel Road property, which includes two lots totaling 45 acres.
Besides daily visitors, the winery can also host 54 events with 30 guests, one event with 100 guests and 500 guests and three events with 250 guests.
In addition, Hourglass, which farms about 21 acres of vineyards, can have 10 full-time employees as well as two harvest employees.
Hourglass also won permission to build a 6,555-square-foot tasting room and office building that will be built where the residence burned during the 2020 Glass Fire. An adjacent swimming pool will be demolished.
The winery plans to dig more than 28,300 square feet of caves. There are now 6,400 square feet of caves.
In addition, the winery plans to build a 916-square-foot hospitality accessory building, install a 65,000-gallon water tank and pump house and widen the driveway to county standards.
The winery must widen the driveway by Oct. 15 to host 20 visitors a day.
The presence of a trailer on the property is being reviewed by code enforcement as a separate matter.
The Planning Commission asked that the fire marshal approve a fire emergency plan, noting the fire risks.
Overall, commissioners praised Hourglass for its organic farming and its land stewardship and its water use analysis.
The Glass Fire, which broke in September 2020, scorched the property, destroying a residence and damaging the winery’s wine production facility and causing $20 million in damages.
Smith told the Napa County Planning Commission he remembered being at the winery a day after the Glass Fire broke.
“It was as if a nuclear bomb had gone off and devastated everything that I had worked 30-plus years to build,” Smith said.
He recalled turning to his son and saying, “It’s just stuff. We’ll fix it.”
The Smith family produced the first vintage of Hourglass at a custom crush facility in 1997. In 2006, they purchased the Hourglass property. Its use permit was granted in 2007.
The winery included caves and a covered crush pad. “And that was pretty much it for the facility,” said Jon Webb, a Hourglass representative.
Hourglass hosted 18 visitors a day, more visitors than its permit allowed, Webb said. Its permit allowed for 10 visitors a day, but only 22 visitors a week. There were also two full-time employees instead of one.
In 2019, Hourglass applied to make its winery compliant with all county regulations under Napa County’s voluntary compliance program approved in 2018.
Smith, a third-generation Napa Valley resident, told the Planning Commission, he was confident at the time the process would move expeditiously.
However, these plans were interrupted in 2020, first by the COVID-19 pandemic, and then the Glass Fire hit the winery on Sept. 27 that year.
“It’s been a journey,” Smith said. “The recovery process along the way has been enormously complex, very difficult, financially devastating.”
Forty-seven businesses have applied for new use permits under Napa County’s voluntary compliance program. All but one were wineries. So far, 42 applications have been approved, according to Napa County. The program may be sunset this year.
