LAKE COUNTY — A newly-formed winery association made its intentions known to the Lake County Board of Supervisors Tuesday to draw attention to the county”s wine offerings in the coming year.
Matt Hughes, chairman of the Lake County Wine Association and co-owner of Zoom Wines winery in Kelseyville, told the board that the association has 19 winery members after its formation six months ago, prior to the 2007 wine grape harvest.
“Our purpose is to increase awareness of Lake County as a wine tasting destination,” Hughes said.
He said the association is working with Lake County Marketing and Economic Development Program deputy director Debra Sommerfield to put up signs around the county that will direct tourists to tasting rooms.
A map showing the tasting rooms is also in the works. Hughes said most of the association”s members have tasting rooms.
“I was walking down the street in Sacramento and I see a store, and the name of the store is ?Beyond Napa.” I think they touched on something important,” Hughes said.
“I think people see Lake County as one of these new areas, and we have a distinctive character, and we provide something they can experience that they haven”t tried before. Lake County fits this to a tee. We have distinctive wines and we”re relatively undiscovered. That”s changing, and we hope to speed that up,” Hughes said.
Plans for the upcoming year include expanding the annual wine adventure beyond its two days of tours to wineries. Hughes said he would like to add winemaker dinners in the two days prior to the weekend wine adventure.
“This is a prime example of what we can do to help fill in the slow months of the year that we have,” supervisor Jeff Smith said.
“We”d like to bring wine writers and key industry insiders to Lake County to show them what we have to offer here,” Hughes said.
Hughes told the Record-Bee Tuesday that the association intends to invite writers from Food and Wine Magazine, Sunset Magazine and other lifestyle magazines.
“We don”t just want to bring wine writers but also travel writers that would tend to write about wineries as part of their report,” Hughes said.
Contact Tiffany Revelle at trevelle@record-bee.com.
