Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome to the KMUD News. I'm your news Director April Lewis and I'm glad to be with you for this broadcast.
On this episode we have in depth coverage on Bryceland vineyards and their 40th anniversary, along with the Humboldt County Planning Commission discussing cannabis odors impacting a farm expansion in the Carlotta area.
But first, quick rundown of local headlines. This is KMUD News.
Starting off in Southern Humboldt Humboldt county road crews are beginning a fiberized micro surface project on roads in southern Humboldt this week with work expected to run through Wednesday, June 3.
Here's a list of currently planned dates for road work. Thursday, May 28 work will be on Redway Drive and Redwood Drive in the eastbound direction with reversing traffic control on Friday, May 29. Bear Canyon Road, Melville Road and Redway Drive will be impacted on Monday, June 1. Church street and Redwood Drive in the westbound direction with reversing traffic control on Tuesday, June 2. Redway Drive, Redwood Drive in the eastbound direction, Bear Canyon Road and Millville Road will be impacted on Wednesday, June 3. Church Street, Redwood Drive in the westbound direction and Redway Drive will have current road works. If anything on this schedule changes, we will be sure to update you in future broadcasts. You can expect some delays on these routes while surface work is completed.
We move next to a report of a missing person in southern Humboldt.
The missing individual is Kylie Bones, 24 years old and from the southern Humboldt area.
Bones is believed to be missing under unknown circumstances.
Kylie Bones was reported missing by a friend on May 26 at approximately 10am after she failed to return from a float on the Eel river near Garberville. She was last contacted on May 24 at around 1pm Bones is described as a white female, approximately 5 foot 2 and weighing about 110 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes.
Anyone with information for the Sheriff's Office regarding Bones possible whereabouts should call the Humboldt County Sheriff's office at 707-445-7251 in the Eureka area on May 28. Personnel from the Eureka Police Department, Arcata Police Department, Humboldt County Sheriff's Office and several allied law enforcement agencies throughout Humboldt county will participate in the annual Special Olympics Law Enforcement Torch Run. The Law Enforcement Torch Run is a nationwide tradition that brings together law enforcement officers and local communities in of Special Olympics athletes and programs. The event raises funds for year round sports training, athletic competition, health services and inclusive opportunities for individuals with intellectual disabilities.
As part of the event, participating officers will carry the Flame of Hope along the Waterfront Trail in a coordinated statewide effort leading up to the Special Olympics Northern California Summer Games.
The run will begin near the boat dock at the Arcata Marsh before continuing south along the waterfront Trail towards Eureka.
Portions of the event will also take place on Second street in Eureka, giving community members and local businesses an opportunity to show support for the runners and athletes involved.
Motorists and residents should expect minor traffic delays in parts of Arcata and Eureka during the event, especially near waterfront trail crossings and along Second Street.
Drivers are encouraged to remain alert for runners and escort vehicles and to plan travel accordingly. Again, the event for the Special Olympics in Arcata and Eureka will be held on May 28.
Caltrans District 1 staff joined local officials Tuesday morning at the Redwood Empire Fairgrounds for the annual Workers Memorial, remembering highway workers who have lost their lives while on the job this year. The event was hosted in Ukiah for the first time since 2018, having previously been held at the district office in Eureka.
Since 1921, 195 Caltrans employees have died while working on California's state highways.
The memorial not only honors their memory, but but it's an opportunity to emphasize the critical importance of safety awareness among workers and motorists to help prevent further loss and serious injuries. Drivers should slow down, stay attentive, avoid distractions and move over when they see amber flashing lights. During the ceremony, a moment of silence was held. Caltrans staff paid tribute to the fallen local workers by placing 17 orange cones while District 1 Maintenance Manager Paul Johnson read each of their names out loud, demonstrating solemn respect and remembrance.
Speakers at the event included Deputy District 1 Director Tom Fitzgerald, Area Construction Engineer Jeffrey Wright, Cal Fire Mendocino Unit Battalion Chief Alex Leonard and Ukiah Area California Highway Patrol Commander Captain Billy O'. Connor.
Caltrans District 1 oversees state highways across Humboldt, Del Norte, Lake and Mendocino counties.
And now to our main stories. This is KMUD News.
The impacts of odor on neighbors of cannabis farms was discussed as Humboldt County's Planning Commission considered a farm expansion. Daniel Mintz reports With odor and water
[00:06:22] Speaker B: issues resolved, a Carlotta Area cannabis farm has a green light to expand its cultivation area by 20,000 square feet, but the odor issue was nevertheless a main topic of general discussion during the May 21st Humboldt County Planning Commission meeting.
The commission continued an initial permit hearing to its May 21 meeting, where the issues that seemingly complicated approval were deemed to be addressed.
The permit applicant, Carlotta Gardens LLC, will expand an existing 50,000 square foot combination mixed light outdoor farm to 70,000 square feet.
The farm is located on Highway 36 in the Carlotta area and Is in a community planning area, which kicks in requirements to enclose cultivation areas for odor control if neighboring residences are within 600ft.
Carlotta Gardens sought a waiver from that, but due to complaints from neighbors, it has agreed to do the odor control.
And its agent, Andy Powell, said the public hearing process has been helpful.
[00:07:37] Speaker C: I want to take a second to thank everybody in this whole process. I've been doing this for a minute or two, but want to thank Michael cliff, director Ford, all you commissioners. This is a process.
And although this isn't turning out the way the applicant wanted, we also want to thank the neighbors because this public process gives applicants, gives us chances to be better neighbors. And I think a lot of one thing that gets missed in this whole process, I think for the public is to see that they do have a voice.
They get to influence how we all work together as a community. So on behalf of the applicant, just wanted to thank everybody for this process, the hard work that's gone into it, and the neighbors that felt comfortable bringing up their concerns and issues, which we actually appreciate very much.
[00:08:24] Speaker B: But the odor issue got further discussion generally, with commissioner Jerome chiriasi suggesting odor control requirements should be more firm.
Planning director John Ford gave some historical context of how odor control is governed in in community planning areas.
[00:08:42] Speaker D: So when we go back to 1.0, the community planning areas really were not contemplated and cultivation was allowed in ag zones.
One of the things that really wasn't envisioned is that there are many community planning areas that have ag general and ag exclusive zones in them.
So that was placing cultivation in very close proximity to some residents.
So this was absolutely a negotiated public process to address cultivation within community planning areas.
This was the solution to that problem. And maybe it doesn't seem like enough right now, but really it's saying that if you're going to be within proximity to residents, you need to enclose. And unless. And there's a provision in the code, unless all of your neighbors, if you're preexisting well for new cultivation, enclose unless you can get a waiver.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Kiriazi questioned whether waivers of the enclosure requirement should be allowed, even if neighbors agree to them. Ford discussed the impacts of odor.
[00:10:02] Speaker D: I spent personally when we were going through this from 1.0, a lot of time walking neighborhoods with people who just were so upset because their houses smelled like a skunk and they were sending their kids to school and their kids smelled like a skunk.
And it was like, I take good care of my kids.
They're bathed, they're clothed, but I send them to school and kids are making fun of them because they smell.
And so that really is the public interaction that resulted in the ordinance provisions like they are.
So what you're being asked to do today is weigh whether or not you want to grant a a waiver to the requirement that was put in place to protect those areas.
[00:10:57] Speaker B: Ford added that complaints have gone down dramatically since the updated version of the county's cannabis ordinance, known as 2.0, was put in place with the odor control requirements.
Water use sourced from a well was another issue that was raised during the prior hearing, as it was originally pegged at 1.76 million gallons a year, but a written staff report says that estimate is artificially high and actual water use will be about 1 million gallons a year.
The conditional use permit for the expansion, with denial of the request for waiving the enclosure requirement was Approved with a 4 to 1 vote, with Commissioner Todd Fulton dissenting In Eureka for KMUD News, this is Daniel Mims.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Riceland Vineyards held celebrations for their 40th anniversary over the Memorial Day weekend, KMUN News reports throughout most of the United States, wine is not what comes to mind when thinking of Humboldt County.
The ubiquitous cannabis marketplace is often discussed, but within Humboldt there is a small but mighty group of vineyard sites and winemakers growing a very different cash crop.
Some, like Whitethorn Winery and Miles Garrett Wines, remain decidedly local outfits, while other producers like Joseph Jewellery, bringing grapes from Humboldt to produce in other locations. In Joseph Jewell's case in Sonoma's Russian River Valley, perhaps the most consistently recognized and long lived of Humboldt's commercial wine producers is Brycelyn Vineyards.
The winery recently celebrated 40 years of commercial wine production with test vintages dating back to the mid-1970s.
Cayman News attended the festivities held over two days during the Memorial Day weekend.
Guests were greeted by a generous array of cheeses, spreads and oysters while sampling a wide variety of wines poured by second generation winemaker Andrew Morris.
Andrew's stepfather, Joe Collins was the original winemaker and founder who oversaw all vintages at the winery until 2008.
Joe explained how Brycelyn Vineyards as a commercial business started from humble beginnings.
[00:13:29] Speaker E: I, being an architect, I slowly built these buildings over the years. You know, I built the barn first and then behind that barn and then I built the back room and then I built this this barn with my first cellar because by then I started getting interested in in wines and I read all these books on, well there weren't that many about wine growing. They call it growing grapes for wine and they kept saying, oh, they didn't know. They haven't found the climate right for Pinot Noir. And it was cool up here like that. And there had been that same book. Even had figures about how hot it was up here. And I said, you know, we ought to give it a shot.
So I put these grapes in right there and about original ones in 1975 or something, just to see how they grew. And that's how I got my start doing this. And it was always been just for fun.
We had a great following here. I mean, the southern Humboldt community, they were ready to drink their local wines, so. So we got lucky, you know.
[00:14:48] Speaker A: Experimenting with different varietals was a large part of the early Bryceland Vineyards experience.
Humboldt county in the 1970s was an unknown zone in terms of existing commercial grape operations, and experimentation was a must to learn which grape varietals would work best.
Pinot Noir in California was also in its infancy and wouldn't see widespread commercial acceptance in the California wine Marketplace until the 1990s.
What seems obvious now is grapes for cooler climates in California was not as obvious 40 plus years ago. Current winemaker Andrew Morris was growing up on the Brycelyn Vineyards property during its early days and spoke of his experience and how the winery gained notoriety during the process of transitioning to a commercial operation.
[00:15:39] Speaker F: So the story of how it got started, my mother and stepfather, I mean, I grew up here in the house here and was part of helping build this when this was an amateur winery. So there are several families making wine together. And my stepfather had emerged as the leader of that group, as the winemaker in that group. So they were entering wines in the county fair in the amateur division.
And a couple years in a row, they won kind of all of the awards, because you're not. You're supposed to enter one wine per person, right? But since they were a group of several people, they would enter several wines in each category under different people's names. It's a little bit unfair because Joe is the winemaker on all of them.
And so that's when they realized that was in the mid-80s, and that's when they realized that they wanted to try to make the winery commercial.
So it transitioned from being a group winemaking project to a commercial winemaking project. And I say from an illegally large home wine operation to an inappropriately small commercial wine operation.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: In 1985, original Brycelyn Vineyards winemaker Joe Collins also spoke on how experimentation and a sheer desire for quality naturally led to the winery's expansion.
[00:16:57] Speaker E: Well, I don't know why? Because even at that time, Even by the mid-80s, there were just very few winery grapes being grown here. You know, there were very few grapes being grown. And so I don't know.
Well, I found out that you need to make wine really good. You need to make it in a big enough batch to keep it from going sour and stuff like that. I mean, big size barrel barrels are good because they, you can keep the wine sealed in a barrel. You're making it in five gallon jugs. There's too much air involved and eventually it's really hard to make wine that way and keep it that way, keep it fresh until you bottle it.
So I'll tell you, our first couple years were really small and our first couple of wine tastings we had, you know, a dozen of our friends here that was, we just kept doing it and then we built that winery and the garage and all these things.
But this vineyard out here was originally had and still has a few odd varieties in it. I mean, a variety of types of grapes. So we know which ones grew best.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Like many long lived southern Humboldt businesses and organizations, Riceland Vineyards is an esoteric anomaly that eschews many of the rules of the marketplace it exists within.
Current winemaker Andrew Morris also spoke on how keeping prices in line with local expectations and building a strong following within the Humboldt marketplace, instead of following the booms and busts of the greater California wine market, helped riceland vineyards reach 40 years of commercial wine production.
[00:18:49] Speaker F: When Joe was getting the winery started, he named it Brycelyn Vineyards, not Joe Collins Winery, because he believes, and I agree with him, that wine is about a time and a place.
And if our winemaking, if we can, we try to figure out what's the natural thing that that place makes and then find a way to frame that so that it, you know, it highlights it. You know, if, you know, a vineyard can be picked early and make a lighter wine, then you can do that. And if, you know, another vineyard has to be picked later because the tannins need to hang longer. So if you learn about the vineyards and then try to reveal the character of the wine, it should be about the site and the year.
And if the winemaker is successful, then it's not really about the winemaker.
And that's something that I learned from Joe and think that that's right. So I'm trying as much as I can to reveal, find out and reveal what, what does Pinot Noir taste like from that site? What does rose taste like from that site? What does, you know, malbec from Ishipishi Ranch in northeastern Humboldt taste like. And if I can explore that with curiosity, then I think that's a better. I mean, that's authenticity, and it is not trying to take a square peg and force it into a round hole, which is what I think a lot of big wineries do when they try to make the wines fit the profile that they think the consumer wants, and they end up with much less interesting wine.
If you have a really strong local following, it's more efficient to just deliver wines locally and not have to ship it and pay all that.
When Joe was making Pinot Noir, that was getting some good recognition, and there was the big spike, and Pinot Noir got really popular and got really expensive. You know, he raises prices from 25 to $27, and then there was a big drop off in the Pinot Noir production, And all those $95 Pinot Noir wineries went out of business, and he raised the price to $29.
The point is that if you think you're going to go up with the boom cycle, you're going to go down with the bust cycle.
And if you maintain a quality product over time, then you can ride through those better than most people.
Not easily, necessarily, but better than most people because you have built up goodwill in the community.
[00:21:30] Speaker A: Lastly, founder and original winemaker Joe Collins spoke on how he approached his winemaking and differences between the program he ran and the current Brycelyn Vineyards winemaking program overseen by stepson Andrew Morris.
[00:21:45] Speaker E: I think every winemaker has just a little bit of his own technique comes through in the wine, you know, and also including when started making wine, you know, I mean, I went through changes every year, like, oh, man, you know, I tasted some wines of this type, and they were super fruity. Maybe we'll try. What do we got to do to make them fruitier? Or, oh, I kind of like this wine over here. It has kind of a more mature, winey taste to it. Well, how do I get that? You know? So I think over a period of years, when I made it those 2, 25 years, I think I changed my methods, too.
And I think that's with Andrew, too. When he started, he was making them quite like mine. Now I think he's got his own way. He doesn't filter his wines. I think that's great.
I probably should have not filtered so much, but I think he saw that that's what people were looking for, a simpler not. It doesn't like the break.
Pristine, perfect, chiseled wine. But, you know, one with softer edges, so he does it that way and I think it's good.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: The event celebrating Brycelyn Vineyard's 40th anniversary over memorial Day weekend was a wonderful example of Humboldt county perseverance and a continued push to keep things going.
Other highlights of the event included the now in bloom and gorgeous rose garden that is on the grounds.
Special wines not usually included in tastings were also presented, including a Spectacular bottle of 1989 Humboldt County Pinot Noir that held up extremely well.
The wine still held bountiful red and blue fruits paired with herbal notes and fine line acidity with a palate that was seamless and well integrated, a hallmark characteristic of wines that age gracefully.
Modern California Pinot Noirs are not usually known for aging well past 10 years or so, and this clearly was a more Burgundian styled exception to that rule. If you would like to visit Brycelyn Vineyards for a tasting of what they've been up to for the last 40 years, you can contact winemaker Andrew Morris at andrewbricelandvineards.com or give the winery a call at 707-923-2429.
Reporting for KMUD, I'm April Lewis.
That's all for our news broadcast. Thanks for listening. Thanks to our rotation of broadcast engineers Dennis Marr, Katie Phillips, Bianna Frederico, Michael McCaskill, Larry Lashley and Javier Rodriguez.
Also thanks to our reporter for this broadcast, Daniel Mintz.
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Sam.
