When Jayson Woodbridge, a former Canadian infantryman turned banker, changed careers and founded a winery in Napa Valley in 1998, he named it Hundred Acre. The name was a tribute to A.A. Milne’s “...” and was meant to evoke carefree whimsy. More recently, however, Mr Woodbridge has been pondering a different sort of fiction: that of Franz Kafka, famous for his portrayals of labyrinthine bureaucracy.

加拿大前步兵出身的银行家杰森·伍德布里奇转行于1998年在纳帕山谷创办了一家酒庄，他为酒庄取名为“百亩田（Hundred Acre）”，这个名字是对A.A.米尔恩创作的维尼小熊的致敬，意在唤起无忧无虑的幻想。然而，就在前不久，伍德布里奇一直在琢磨另一种类型的故事：例如，弗朗茨·卡夫卡（Franz Kafka）的小说，以描绘迷宫般的官僚主义而闻名。

In October Mr Woodbridge sued Napa County in a state court for “administrative overreach”, accusing it of creating “mountainous red tape and endless bureaucratic obstacles” for him and other vineyard owners. He says he spent about six months listening to “other people’s stories about how bad” regulatory overreach had become and decided “somebody’s got to do something, and that somebody is me.”

10月，伍德布里奇在一个州法庭上起诉纳帕县“行政管理过度”，指控纳帕县对他和其他葡萄酒庄园主造成了“堆成山的红葡萄和没完没了的官僚阻碍”。他表示过去6个月他了解了“其他人关于过度行政管理造成的后果有多少糟糕”，并且决定“总要有人做点什么，那么这个人就是我”。
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The lawsuit came after the catastrophic Glass Fire in 2020, which burned nearly 70,000 acres in Northern California, including some of Mr Woodbridge’s property. After about a year of looking at the charred remains of trees, Mr Woodbridge decided to remove the stumps and experiment with “dry-­farming” new vines, by putting young plants in pots with no bottoms in the hope that they would put down roots in the soil below. Napa County learned of the experiment and, threatening penalties, demanded he cease and replant the trees that had been there before, because he had not gone through the process of applying for a permit or doing an environmental review.

这场官司发生在2020年“玻璃大火”事件后，这场大火烧掉了北加利福尼亚州7万英亩土地，包括伍德布里奇拥有的土地。在观察了一年剩下的烧焦的葡萄树后，伍德布里奇决定移除树桩，并且用新葡萄藤试验“旱地耕作”，他把幼苗种在没有底的花盆里，希望他们能够在下面的土壤里生根。纳帕县听说了这个试验，威胁要对其罚款，要求伍德布里奇停止种植，并且把原先在这里的葡萄树重新种下去，因为他没有办理申请许可，或者进行环境评估。
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Defiant and defensive of his property rights, Mr Woodbridge accuses the county of arbitrary meddling. He says he did not move any earth for the vines, so was not required to apply for a permit. He also points out that vineyards serve as natural firebreaks, unlike flammable tree species. Napa County says Hundred Acre has “created an environmental hazard”, leaving the hillside land “at high risk of erosion”. On November 28th it filed a response to Mr Woodbridge’s complaint and asked that the lawsuit be dismissed by the court with prejudice, because the actions for which he seeks relief and damages are “due to the acts and omissions” of Hundred Acre.

出于反抗和对自己财产的保护，伍德布里奇控告县政府任意干涉。他说他没有因为种植葡萄藤移走任何泥土，所以不需要申请许可。他还指出葡萄园就是一个天然防火墙，和易燃的植株不同。纳帕县表示百亩田“制造了一场环境灾难”，把坡地置于“极高的侵蚀风险”之中。今年11月28日，纳帕县出具了对伍德布里奇诉求的答复意见，并要求法院以偏见驳回诉讼，因为他寻求救济和损害赔偿是“由于百亩田的作为和不作为”。

Defiant and defensive of his property rights, Mr Woodbridge accuses the county of arbitrary meddling. He says he did not move any earth for the vines, so was not required to apply for a permit. He also points out that vineyards serve as natural firebreaks, unlike flammable tree species. Napa County says Hundred Acre has “created an environmental hazard”, leaving the hillside land “at high risk of erosion”. On November 28th it filed a response to Mr Woodbridge’s complaint and asked that the lawsuit be dismissed by the court with prejudice, because the actions for which he seeks relief and damages are “due to the acts and omissions” of Hundred Acre.

出于反抗和对自己财产的保护，伍德布里奇控告县政府任意干涉。他说他没有因为种植葡萄藤移走任何泥土，所以不需要申请许可。他还指出葡萄园就是一个天然防火墙，和易燃的植株不同。纳帕县表示百亩田“制造了一场环境灾难”，把坡地置于“极高的侵蚀风险”之中。今年11月28日，纳帕县出具了对伍德布里奇诉求的答复意见，并要求法院以偏见驳回诉讼，因为他寻求救济和损害赔偿是“由于百亩田的作为和不作为”。

The lawsuit is noteworthy because it speaks to broader concerns about the business climate in one of the world’s most famed wine regions, which attracts around 3.8m tourists a year. Napa has become a microcosm of California, which is notorious for heavy regulation and lack of friendliness to business. Napa Valley vintners are facing numerous obstacles, including drought and the threat of another big fire, which ruined most producers’ 2020 vintage, but “over-regulation is the single most important issue for small wineries,” according to Stuart Smith, the founder of Smith­Madrone Vineyards & Winery. He says, “Fire risk is number two.”

这场官司值得关注，因为它为大众关心的世界上最负盛名的葡萄酒地域的商业环境发声，这里每年吸引380万游客来访。纳帕成为加利福尼亚的缩影，这里有臭名昭著的繁重监管和不友好的商业环境。纳帕山谷的酿酒师们还要面对数不尽的阻碍，包括干旱和另一场大火的威胁（2020年的一场大火摧毁了大部分生产商2020年份的葡萄酒），但是“对小酿酒厂来说，过度监管是他们面对的唯一最重要的麻烦”，史密斯-麦道奥酒庄的创始人斯图尔特·史密斯说道，“大火只能排第二”。

Bottles and bureaucracy
Mr Smith has worked in Napa Valley for 50 years but believes the county government is “frankly hostile to the wine industry”. Rules are strict and unevenly enforced. For example, Napa is the only wine­growing region in the world that does not allow weddings, says Mr Smith. (A handful of wineries were grandfathered in and are exempt.) Napa restricts wineries’ ability to profit from food sales or sell products other than wine. “The over-regulation is so onerous that people go around it as much as they can,” says Mr Smith, leading to a “classic black­market system”.

葡萄酒和官僚主义
史密斯在纳帕山谷工作了50年，他认为县政府“对酿酒业的敌视显而易见”。规则严格且执行力度不均。史密斯说，比如，纳帕是世界上唯一一个不允许举报婚礼的葡萄酒产区。（很多葡萄酒厂是从祖上继承下来的，而且是免税的）。纳帕限制了酒庄从销售食品或葡萄酒以外的产品获得利润的能力。“过度监管如此繁多，以至于人们尽可能地绕过它”，史密斯表示，这导致了“一个经典的黑市系统”。

A recent lawsuit by Napa County, suing Hoopes Vineyard, a small, family­owned winery, illustrates the local government’s thirst for a fight. It accuses the winery of various violations that constitute a “public nuisance”, including offering yoga classes, selling greeting cards and hand sanitiser, and failing to obtain a building permit for a structure that is more than 120 square feet (11 squaremetres). This is a chicken coop, according to Lindsay Hoopes, the boss. Ms Hoopes says the issue in Napa is not regulation itself but “unprincipled bureaucracy” and how it seems everybody is held to different rules. “The Napa permitting process has become this terror of never knowing what you’re going to get next,” she says.

最近，纳帕县起诉了一家小型的家族酒庄，胡珀酒庄，这说明当地政府对加入战斗的渴望。它控告这家酒庄违反了多项规定，造成“公害”，包括提供瑜伽课程，销售贺卡和洗手液，未获得超过120平方英尺（11平方米）的建筑许可证。据酒庄老板琳赛·胡珀说，这是个鸡笼。胡珀女士表示，纳帕的问题不是监管，而是“无原则的官僚主义”，而且似乎每个人都遵循着不同的法律，“纳帕审批流程让人恐慌，你永远不知道下一步会得到什么。”
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Regulators are under pressure from environmentalists, who are concerned about everything from congestion to soil erosion, and may feel nostalgia for a time when Napa was more rural. But winemakers, too, face many difficulties, from declining demand among young people to climate risk, labour shortages and a slowing economy. “It would be good for the people applying the rules to spend two months working in the winery to understand how hard it is,” suggests Jonathan Pey, a winemaker. Mr Pey has ended his California wine ventures and has decamped to France to produce Beaujolais.

监管者也在环保主义者的压迫之下，这些人关心从交通堵塞到土壤侵蚀的一切问题，而且可能对更加乡村的纳帕感到怀旧，但是酿酒师面临的很多困难，从年轻人逐渐降低的需求到气候威胁，劳工短缺以及经济衰退。酿酒师乔纳森·佩伊说“最好让制定规则的人在酒庄工作两个月，这样他们就能理解到底有多难了”。佩伊已经结束了他在加州的葡萄酒生意，并且逃到法国生产博若莱葡萄酒。

Others are staying closer to home. Caymus, one of Napa’s most famous winemakers, recently expanded production and tasting in Suisun Valley, a 40­minute drive east of Napa. The business climate in Napa played a part in the decision—giving new meaning to a flight of wine.

其他人留在离家近的地方。纳帕最有名的酿酒师之一佳慕最近在Suisun山谷扩大了生产并召开了葡萄酒品尝会，这里距离纳帕有40分钟车程。纳帕的商业环境在这一决定中发挥了作用，为葡萄酒的起飞赋予了新的意义。