Forced Speech in Wine Country

On a quiet stretch of California’s Central Coast, where small wineries compete not through scale but through identity, we built Flying Goat Cellars the old fashioned way—one bottle, one customer, and one relationship at a time. In a market defined by differentiation, independence is a business model that allows us to stand apart. 

Now, our uniqueness is under threat from a government mandate that forces us to participate in a story written by someone else. 

Last year, Santa Barbara County created a wine “Business Improvement District,” imposing a 1 percent assessment on winery revenues from within California and requiring participation in the Santa Barbara Vintners’ Association. The policy is framed as a cooperative effort to promote the region. In practice, however, it operates as a legal obligation that forces every winery, regardless of its own strategy or convictions, to fund and associate with a single, private, centralized marketing voice.

For us, that mandate strikes at the heart of the business we spent decades building. Flying Goat Cellars was founded on individuality, experimentation, and the freedom to shape our own identity in a crowded market. We do not object to marketing. We object to being forced to surrender control over how—and whether—our business speaks. 

Rather than inviting participation, the county is mandating speech, blurring the line between cooperation and coercion. Now, with the help of the Goldwater Institute, we are fighting back.

That fight begins with a core constitutional principle. The First Amendment protects more than the right to speak. It protects the right not to speak, and critically, not to subsidize the speech of others. The Supreme Court has made clear that compelled funding of private expression raises serious constitutional concerns, particularly when the message is not government speech but the product of an independent organization. 

Santa Barbara County’s ordinance falls squarely within that danger. The Vintners’ Association is not a public agency. It is a private entity that sets its own promotional priorities without direct public accountability. Yet the county has effectively delegated authority to it, requiring us and other wineries to fund its activities and accept membership we never sought.

The county describes the mandate as a regional benefit, but that label does not answer the constitutional question. It only tries to move around it. The issue is not the value of collective promotion, but whether government may force independent businesses to finance a private message.

Nor is the problem limited to speech. By redirecting winery revenues to a private association, the county is not regulating commerce or promoting tourism—it is compelling private businesses to fund an organization we did not choose, for purposes we do not control. The Constitution does not permit government to appropriate private property without a legitimate public use. Here, the money does not flow to any public function. It flows to a private organization advancing its own agenda.

That is not regulation. It is taxation for the benefit of a private association.

For small wineries, the cost is real and threatens our future. California’s independent producers already operate within narrow margins, facing rising input costs, shifting consumer preferences, and intensified competition from larger brands. Our ability to control our own message, choose our own partnerships, and spend limited resources according to our own strategy is what allows businesses like ours to survive in a crowded market.

A mandate that overrides those choices does more than impose another expense. It changes who gets to decide how our independent business presents itself to the public. Instead of allowing us to judge whether a marketing campaign serves our interests, the county substitutes centralized direction for entrepreneurial judgment. Over time, that forced conformity will erode the very diversity among the region that the policy claims to promote.

The better path is also the simpler one. If the Vintners’ Association provides value, wineries will join it voluntarily. If its marketing efforts are effective, participation will follow. That is the logic of both markets and civil society: legitimacy is earned through performance, not secured through force.

Our legal challenge has implications far beyond California’s Central Coast, including in places like Temecula Valley and Livermore, which have similar winery mandates, and in business improvement districts around the nation where government compels participation.  

We urged Santa Barbara County to amend its ordinance, making both the assessment and association membership voluntary. That approach would have preserved the county’s interest in regional promotion while restoring the constitutional baseline—one in which speech, association, and property remain matters of choice rather than compulsion. The county refused. 

The issue now moves to the courts, where our argument is clear: The First Amendment does not permit government to force Americans to fund private speech, compel their association with private organizations, or redirect their property absent a legitimate public use.

We set out to make wine on our own terms. Santa Barbara County has decided otherwise. The Constitution may have something to say about that.