SAN DIEGO -- Ignoring concerns from county planners Wednesday, county supervisors directed their staff to create an ordinance that would make it easier for small "boutique" wineries to get off the ground -- and maybe rejuvenate San Diego County's once-booming, pre-Prohibition wine industry.

Supervisors voted to direct their staff to come back in 120 days with an ordinance that would allow small wineries to open tasting rooms and sell their wines to retail visitors -- without having to pay for major-use permits and expensive studies that can now cost between $40,000 and $200,000.

Jeff Murphy of the county's department of planning and land use said that under the rules, the county only recognized two classes of wineries -- one class of "small wineries" that produce fewer than 7,500 gallons of wine a year and had no tasting rooms or retail sales; and all other wineries.

Murphy said now any winery that wished to increase production or feature a tasting room and sell to retail customers had to pay for major-use permits, as well as environmental studies such as traffic, biology and other issues.

Representatives from the Ramona Valley Winery Association -- a "loose" collection of 13 wineries from Ramona -- said the current rules basically quash any hope for small wineries to gain an economic foothold, survive and gradually build their reputations, because it costs too much to do so.

Growers and winery association officials submitted their own idea for a new ordinance at Wednesday's meeting that would erase use permits and expansion fees for small wineries.

Association representative Andy Harris said small wineries in other counties generate from 55 percent to 68 percent of their total revenues through tasting rooms and retail sales, and an additional 8 percent to 12 percent came through retail Internet sales.

"Under the current regulations in this county where you have to have a use permit," Harris said, "80 percent of those potential (revenues) are forbidden to all of our small start-up wineries."

Harris said the county's regulations treated small "mom-and-pop" wineries the same way they treat giant producers such as E&J Gallo.

"They all have to produce the same amount of fees for the county," he said.

County planners said that they had several concerns about easing the regulations too much.

In their own recommendation to the supervisors, planners suggested that small wineries still be required to pay private road maintenance fees, to be within the San Diego County Water Authority's service area -- and not rely upon groundwater -- and to cease all wine tastings and sales by "sundown," rather than the 10 p.m. time the wine association wanted.

But Supervisor Dianne Jacob, and other supervisors, said they didn't think that the small wineries would significantly increase traffic or tap groundwater supplies -- and that a new county ordinance should not contain road maintenance fees or require growers to be inside water-service lines.

Jacob and the board, however, did agree that wine tastings and retail sales should end at sunset.

A number of people who live in the Ramona area also said that they worried about easing the county's regulations -- and that it could hurt their neighborhoods.

Many of the small wineries are in agriculturally zoned areas that also have residential development.

"The idea of a commercial enterprise having to cross private roads, school zones and bus stops in a residential area is simply incompatible," Ramona resident Steve Pelzer said.

Meanwhile, Harris and other proponents of easing the regulations on small wineries said that San Diego County had great potential to support a much larger, and profitable, wine industry.

In January 2006, the federal government designated Ramona Valley an American Viticultural Area, a tax and trade designation that allows the region to label its wines with the designation.

And officials Wednesday -- including Supervisor Bill Horn, who owns avocado groves on his Valley Center property -- said San Diego County once had a very influential wine industry, but that it was plowed under during Prohibition from 1919 to 1933.

Horn said Escondido's Grape Day Park got its name because the land was donated by local grape growers around 1905, that North County was once "covered" with wineries that disappeared during Prohibition.

"I happen to know that because my great-grandfather was a bootlegger," Horn said to laughter.

- Contact staff writer Gig Conaughton at (760) 739-6696 or gconaughton@nctimes.com.