(Signalscv) - A decades-old Health Department ordinance that imposed food-processing standards on L.A. County wineries will soon be lifted, a county health official said this week.

Easing that ordinance — which imposes permit requirements not applied to breweries in the county or wineries elsewhere in the state — would level the playing field for county wineries and allow the industry to flourish like it has elsewhere in California, say local vintners.

The change in county permit requirements isn’t quite a done deal, says Fredrick Agyin, chief environmental health specialist for the Los Angeles County Department of Health. But he’s confident it will be a done deal by July 1.

“Beginning in the county’s next fiscal year, which is in July, they (county wineries) will not need to be permitted, consistent with wineries across the state,” Agyin said during a phone interview Wednesday.

Only the county Board of Supervisors can actually revoke the requirement, though.
“The ordinance change is going through the review process,” Agyin said, noting he expects a chance to recommend the change to supervisors before the 2016-2017 fiscal year begins.

California wineries accounted for some $7.4 billion in direct and indirect spending in 2012, and the total economic benefit to the state was estimated at $26 billion that year.

But due to its ordinance, Los Angeles County gets just a sliver of those economic benefits enjoyed by winery-rich counties elsewhere in the state.

That’s a historical irony, according to a group of Santa Clarita Valley vintners who lobbied for years to overturn the food-processing category applied to county wineries.

“By 1900 we were the largest wine-growing region in the United States,” said Juan Alonso of Alonso Family Vineyards and Le Chene French Cuisine in the Santa Clarita Valley.

“This was the birth of the wine industry in the United States by Spaniards,” Alonso said during an interview with the Santa Clarita Valley Business Journal. “Now we have rules going back to Prohibition and the early 1950s.”

The few wineries that exist in Los Angeles County pay exorbitant costs as they see competitors across the county line establishing their own businesses for far less, said Steve Lemley, who joined with partner Nate Hasper to build what’s called a crushing facility — where grapes are turned to wine — in Valencia.

They run a wine-tasting room in Newhall for their Pulchella Winery label. Their grapes are grown in Paso Robles.

“It cost us over $100,000 more than it should have to open the winery (in L.A County) just to meet Health Department standards that were redundant and unnecessary,” Lemley said.