Lausanne, Switzerland will be the next stop on Napa County’s ongoing global scoping mission to keep up with the international wine world.

The District Board will be sending CEO Belia Ramos and Supervisor Alfredo Pedroza there October 22-27 to attend the Great Wine Capitals conference. The conference takes place annually in one of the 11 designated wine capitals.

Pedroza said attending the annual conferences helps the county understand how other wine regions are dealing with such common issues as smoke pollution from fires, wildfire response and the COVID-19 pandemic.

“For us, it’s about what we can learn from it, what we can bring back to our jurisdictions from these world-renowned regions to make it better for us locally,” Pedroza said.

Lausanne is the seat of the International Olympic Committee. In addition to the view of the snow-capped Alps, the region also offers vineyards and around 200 wineries.

Regulators on Tuesday approved Pedroza and Ramos to attend the Swiss conference, along with Agriculture Commissioner Tracy Cleveland, at a cost not exceeding $18,000. This includes Napa County’s share of the Great Wine Capitals membership dues shared with Napa Valley Vintners and Visit Napa Valley.

The board also heard a report on last year’s conference.

The 2022 conference was held in Mendoza, Argentina, from October 28th to November 5th. Supervisor Ryan Gregory and Cleveland traveled there at county expense. Pedroza competed practically from Napa.

Also in the Napa County contingent were Sarah Gillihan of Visit Napa Valley and Tom Davies, Visit Napa Valley CEO and President of V. Sattui Winery. The county did not pay for their trips.

Cleveland said she went to wineries and vineyards and saw various farming practices in an area she described as a desert that brings water down canals from the Andes.

“It was really, really important and interesting to be able to interact with some of these people, to talk about some of their winemaking practices, to see and ask about pest pressures and the issues they have with water,” she said.

Gregory said Mendoza is a gigantic wine region compared to Napa. It can take two hours to travel from Mendoza to the outer areas.

“We noticed that there are no land use regulations in Mendoza,” Gregory said. “They build hotels, restaurants, whatever they want… There’s quite a difference.”

In contrast, Napa County has rural land use laws designed to protect agriculture that, in most cases, prohibit wineries from adding hotels or restaurants. No manager suggested switching to the Mendoza model.

Gregory noted the growth in direct-to-consumer sales of wine at wineries in the various international wine regions.

“I think sometimes we get stuck with the idea that Napa is the only one that’s struggling with this,” he said. “But the whole world is now transitioning to direct-to-consumer sales to compete in this new breed of wine world.”

Supervisor Anne Cottrell was elected to the Board of Supervisors in November. This was the first time she had heard a report on the annual Great Wine Capitals trips as a supervisor.

From what she’s heard from the Mendoza contingent, it’s valuable for Napa County officials to attend and attend the conferences, she said.

“I think the challenge is that it’s a big journey,” Cottrell said. “It’s a long distance, so it’s expensive. But if we can continue the dialogue and bring back information…”

Great Wine Capitals members are Napa Valley-San Francisco; Adelaide, South Australia; Bilbao-Rioja, Spain; Bordeaux, France; Cape Town-Cape Winelands, South Africa; Lausanne, Switzerland; Mainz Rheinhessen, Germany; Mendoza, Argentina; Oporto, Portugal; Valparaiso Casablanca Valley, Chile and Verona, Italy.

Napa Valley-San Francisco became a member of Great Wine Capitals in 2006, according to a district report.