(SonomaNews) - Limiting the number of wine-tasting rooms? Yes.

Creating wine-tasting business licenses? No.

That was the scorecard at the end of the Jan. 14 meeting of the Sonoma City Council, which continued its efforts to rein in the proliferation of tasting rooms in the downtown Plaza area. For more than a year, city officials have been looking at options to place tighter regulations on local wine dens, whose numbers have increased dramatically in the past several years – affecting not only the diversity of businesses in the downtown, but the price of commercial rents as well.

Since 2012, the number of tasting rooms around the Plaza has increased from 17 to 26, according to city staff – an uptick of 35 percent. Meanwhile, since 2010, commercial lease rates on the Plaza have grown from $2 per square foot to $6 per square foot.