High court’s fine wine decision

A decision from the Ohio Supreme Court this month that enables a Lake Milton winery to continue to operate ends — at least temporarily — years of high-spirited debate.

The resolution of the case pleases agricultural interests in a state where wine making has become a boom industry. The number of wineries in Ohio has more than doubled from 75 in 1999 to 140 in 2010, according to the Ohio Grape Industries Committee.

The resolution of the case, however, angers staunch opponents of the Myrddin Winery in Milton Township who have been fighting its operation since it opened about six years ago. They argue the winery violates township zoning regulations for business activity on property zoned residential. Opponents won their cases in Mahoning County and state appellate courts, but the state’s highest court overturned those lower-court decisions July 12.

SUPREME COURT RULED CORRECTLY

The Supreme Court simply applied long-standing state law to the winery. The crux of its ruling lies in townships’ inability to control property used for any type of agricultural ventures. The court presented clear and unambiguous language from the Ohio Revised Code Section 519.21 that states a township has no power to prohibit the “use of buildings or structures incident to the use for agricultural purposes of the land on which such buildings or structures are located, including buildings or structures that are used primarily for vinting and selling wine.”

As a result, the winery can continue to operate, and the decision opens the door for more vintners in the state to harvest grapes and sell their byproduct in townships. The Cortland Winery, for example, plans to relocate to residentially-zoned land in adjacent Bazetta Township.

Opponents who feel strongly enough about the agricultural exemption in township zoning law, however, can still challenge the law by working to revise it. That means they must band together, perhaps under the umbrella of the Ohio Township Association, to contact sympathetic state legislators to draft, introduce and attempt to pass a bill to strike the agricultural exemption from state zoning statures.

If and until that happens, however, the operators of Myrddin Winery and other vintners have every legal right to operate.