It’s the Great Pumpkin…Wine.
Today we learned that Old Mission’s new Bonobo Winery is at risk of losing its special use permit and with it, its ability to do business.
And it’s all because of pumpkins.
The winery planted a pumpkin patch and it quickly became a seedy situation. Newly elected Peninsula Township supervisor Rob Manigold decided the patch put Bonobo out of compliance with a Township ordinance that requires wineries to grow wine-making fruit on much of their land.
Peninsula Township Ordinance 8.7.3(10) talks about special use permits for wineries. It says that the winery must use at least 75 percent of its land for growing “crops that can be used for wine production.”
And guess what? Pumpkin wine is a thing.
A google search for “pumpkin wine” yields more than 69,000 results. Even the Mayo Clinic says that pumpkin is a fruit. Ergo, a pumpkin can grow up to be a jack o’ lantern, a pie, a squashy soup, or well-balanced full-bodied wine with mellow tannins and a subtle underlying hint of oak.
Because the township ordinance only requires the winery to grow crops that CAN be used for wine production, it doesn’t matter if Bonobo actually uses the pumpkins for wine or not. Because pumpkin wine is a thing, and pumpkins CAN be made into wine, they fulfill the ordinance requirements. Pumpkins even actually grow on vines, just like grapes.
Township officials say that the intent of the ordinance was to require wineries to plant traditional wine-making fruit, such as grapes. Perhaps their attorney should charge them a bunch (grape pun) to explain to them that courts interpret laws by the plain and ordinary meaning of the words in them; not by what subsequently-elected officials think a previous board might have meant when they passed an ordinance. If the previous board members meant grapes, they could have just said grapes. They didn’t.
Is it this newly elected board’s plan to harass businesses? Is it too much to expect our elected officials to google it before making one of our business incur legal expenses and possibly closure, not to mention stress? Do we really need the crop police in Peninsula Township?
You can even read an article that the Record Eagle published about pumpkin wine all the way back in 1951. (https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/55563243/)
Perhaps if this ends up in court, a case of pumpkin wine can serve as an exhibit.