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When the calendar flips to November, most of us turn our thoughts to the holidays, winter weather, and…Wine Improvement Districts?
Believe it or not, the proposed Sonoma County Wine Improvement District (WID)—a dominant pre-harvest talking point—remains on pause. And while “letting sleeping dogs lie” is almost always the sensible approach, I’ve rarely been celebrated for taking the sensible path. So when a “report card” of sorts on Winery Improvement Districts quietly surfaced yesterday, I dug in.
The document in question—the Livermore Wine Heritage District’s 2024–2025 annual report—is tucked deep in the agenda packet for the upcoming November 24, 2025 Livermore City Council meeting, where it will presumably sail through approval. I pulled it out of the hundreds of pages so you don’t have to. (You can access it HERE.)
Why should we care? Because Livermore, along with Temecula, is one of the only regions with a WID long enough to yield meaningful, measurable results. Their new report outlines the programs executed over the past year to promote Livermore wineries and previews what’s planned for the coming fiscal cycle. At a high level, they broke down spending as follows:
- 33% — Marketing & Brand Awareness
- 18% — Quality Enhancement & Education
- 15% — Administration & Operations
- 15% — Advocacy, Community & Industry Engagement
- 10% — Professional Development & Education
- Remainder — Fees & Contingency
The tone is predictably optimistic. They intend to renew their WID next year and are confident in its value.
But one thing isn’t featured: a comparison to the prior year’s (2023–2024) annual report. Luckily, that report is also publicly available (HERE)—so I spent some time with the numbers. Here’s what stood out:
• Marketing spend surged.
2023–2024 marketing expenditures: $481,802.68
2024–2025 marketing expenditures: $597,066.73
That’s a 23.9% increase.
• Direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales did not.
Because the WID revenue is a flat 2% tax on gross DTC sales, the math is easy:
2023–2024 revenue from the 2% assessment: $567,829.96
2024–2025 revenue from the 2% assessment: $514,714.48
That’s a 9.3% decrease in DTC sales.
For context, the Sovos/ShipCompliant DTC Report notes that industrywide DTC sales were down 5% in 2024. Livermore’s decline significantly outpaced that.
None of this is encouraging. Even among those skeptical of WIDs—especially when pitched as a cure-all for an industry facing deep structural challenges—many of us were quietly hoping they might prove surprisingly effective. We all want a silver bullet. Instead, the 2024–2025 report notes that four Livermore wineries closed during the year. No one wants to see that.
If there’s one takeaway, it might be this: a WID is very good at raising money, but without fresh, innovative ideas, the value seems to stop there.
So what might a genuinely new idea look like? Let me offer one thought:
Maybe the model needs to scale up—not down.
Rather than Sonoma vs. Livermore vs. Santa Barbara in a series of isolated local campaigns, perhaps the industry should explore a California-wide Wine Improvement District. Ironically, one of the original arguments for the Sonoma County WID was that “other regions are doing it,” and we “can’t afford to be left behind.” What if we reframed that thinking?
Instead of dividing resources by region, imagine pooling them to promote California wine as a whole—much the way the legendary “I Love New York” campaign revitalized an entire state’s tourism economy. (More on that campaign HERE.) A unified statewide push could possibly rekindle broader interest in California wine, increase DTC engagement across all AVAs, and provide the sort of cultural lift individual districts seem unable to generate on their own.
Yes, that would be a Herculean lift. It would require government partnership, industry alignment, and leadership from individuals with the right political and economic connections. But large-scale challenges often demand large-scale thinking.
Just a thought—from someone who spends their free time scrolling through Livermore City Council agenda packets. Maybe it’s worth talking about.