“Lake County produces an impressive collection of Cabernet Sauvignons, several of which have won gold medals at international wine competitions,” said Shannon Gunier, Director of the Lake County Winegrape Commission. “Tasting these wines collectively allowed us to define the distinct characteristics that set our wines apart from those of other regions. It also offered an opportunity for our winemakers to challenge one other, share expertise and experiences, and help make Lake County wines even better.”

The Cabernets were divided into two flights: wines under $25 from vintage years 2003-2006, and wines over $25 from vintage years 2004-2005. Among the top-rated Cabernets from the under $25 flight were the 2006 Obsidian Ridge, 2004 Dynamite, and 2005 Brassfield Estate. In the $25 and over flight, the top-rated Cabernets were 2004 Snows Lake One, 2004 Steele and 2005 Shed Horn.

“Lake County offers beautiful Cabernets with a distinctive, dense dark fruit character and intense color," said Gunier. “They are not overblown or over oaked. They are beautifully made wines that express the true varietal character of the Cabernet Sauvignon that we grow in Lake County. And they are winning a lot of medals.”

Those in attendance included John Adriance of Snows Lake Vineyard, Mark Burch of Wildhurst Winery, Bob Broman of Bob Broman Cellars, Greg Graham of Gregory Graham Wines, Brent Holdenried of Holdenried Harvesting, Jeff Lyon of Robin Hill Vineyards, Glenn McGourty of UC Cooperative Extension, Rob Roumiguiere of Roumiguiere Vineyards, Donna Roumiguiere of Steele Wines, Malcolm Seibly of Dynamite Vineyards, Clay Shannon of Shannon Ridge Winery, Jim Smith of Nova Winegrape Brokers, Mike Wood of Shannon Ridge Winery, Paul Wagner and Susan Olson of Balzac Communications, and Shannon Gunier and Collette Merrill of Lake County Winegrape Commission.

“Lake County produces some of the highest quality fruit in California,” said Gunier. “The quality of the wine produced from our grapes continues to impress. It’s time for people to taste these wines again and see for themselves what Lake County wines are all about.”

Since its inception in 1992, the Lake County Winegrape Commission has marketed the premium Lake County winegrape growing region to new and existing grape buyers and wineries all over California. The Commission also assists growers in a variety of activities including educational and research programs that benefit growers’ vineyard development.

In 1991, when the statewide California Winegrape Commission was voted down, Bob Roumiguiere, a local Lake County grower and president of the Grape Growers Association, saw the opportunity for local Lake County Winegrape growers to band together and with the LCGGA, spearheaded the creation of a local commission.

Now in its 15th year, the Lake County Winegrape Commission has been instrumental in developing the Lake County winegrape region’s unwavering commitment to high quality winegrapes through education, marketing, and research.

Visit the commission online at www.lakecountywinegrape.org.

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NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the Planning Commission of the County of Lake, State of California, will hold a public hearing on application UP 07-14, GPAP 07-07, RZ 07-15 proposing a use permit for a private 18-hole golf course with a practice range and club house, 18 special events per year, importation of approximately 60,000 cubic yards of material, a rezone of a portion of the site to “RL” Rural Lands, and a general plan amendment of a portion of the site to Rural Lands. The Project applicant is Langtry Farms, LLC. The project is located at 21423 Butts Canyon Road and 23000 Oat Hill Road, Middletown, and further described as APN 014-320-08 and 013-024-29. The Planning Commission will consider adoption of a Mitigated Negative Declaration for the use permit, rezone, and general plan amendment based on Initial Study IS 07-44. The proposed mitigated negative declaration will be available for review in the Planning Division of the Community Development Department in the Lake County Courthouse, 255 North Forbes Street, Lakeport, California thirty (30) days before the hearing and the staff report will be available ten (10) before the hearing. The Planner processing this application is Melissa Floyd, who may be reached at (707) 245-9740 or by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The public hearing will be held in the Board of Supervisor’s Chamber in the Courthouse on the 28th day of February at 10:10 a.m., at which time and place interested persons may attend and be heard. If you challenge the action of the Planning Commission on any of the above stated items in court, it may be limited to only those issues raised at the public hearing described in this notice, or written correspondence delivered to the Lake County Planning Commission at, or prior to, the public hearing.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT

Richard Coel, Director

By: ______________________________________

Danae Bowen, Office Assistant III

In particular, both the Sierra Club Lake Group and the Lake County Farm Bureau have come out against Mark Mitchell's Eachus View Estates Subdivision, which went before the Board of Supervisors Tuesday.

The project proposes splitting up a 90-acre agricultural parcel into four residential parcels between two and three acres each, plus a 76-acre agricultural parcel.

The board held off making a decision until its Feb. 5 meeting.

Robert Gayaldo, president of the Lake County Farm Bureau Board of Directors, wrote a letter dated Jan. 10 to the Board of Supervisors, asking them to reject Mitchell's project.

The Farm Bureau also had opposed the project in its original form, Gayaldo explained, because of conflicts with the General Plan and Lakeport Area Plan regarding protection of prime agricultural soils. “As listed these soils are conducive to the production of walnuts or wine grapes,” Gayaldo wrote.

Even in its modified form, the Farm Bureau protests the project because of its conflict with planning policies, according to Gayaldo.

One remaining issue remains the project's proposed 50-foot buffer between the residential parcels and nearby agriculture, said Gayaldo.

“This has been a consistent concern from the Farm Bureau on all proposed developments that have been proposed adjoining agricultural lands,” wrote Gayaldo. “The Lake County Agricultural Commissioner recommended a 300-foot buffer, which we support.”

Gayaldo wrote that, although the new General Plan hasn't been accepted, he suggested it can serve as a guideline for decisions on projects such as Mitchell's.

In particular, the plan's Agricultural Element Committee suggests maintaining 40-acre minimum lot sizes in agriculturally zoned property, maintaining the zoning of all presently zoned agricultural property in the new plan and larger buffers.

Similarly, Sierra Club Lake Group Chair Victoria Brandon pointed to “adverse impacts on agriculture” in a letter to the Community Development Department dated June 27, 2007.

Mitchell's plan modifications offered only a “marginal improvement,” Brandon wrote.

Adverse impacts on agriculture wouldn't be reduced, said Brandon, particularly since the inadequate 50-foot agricultural buffer was not increased and no buffer was planned between a six-acre parcel surrounded by the subdivision.

“Even more consequentially, by allowing a residential rezone on prime agricultural soils we would be broadcasting the lamentable message that the community's expressed intent to preserve this resource as a precious and irreplaceable heritage can be disregarded with impunity,” Brandon wrote.

Other concerns cited by Brandon significant potential for a drain on the Scotts Valley aquifer; the fact that the biological survey the Department of Fish and Game recommended was not completed; possibility of destruction of rare plants and other biological resources; and degradation of Eachus Lake and its associated wetlands.

“No degree of downsizing can change the project's location outside the North Lakeport urban growth boundaries, or its distorting effects on the patterns of orderly growth in the vicinity,” said Brandon.

Brandon asked the county to reject the project; failing that, she requested that the county have an environmental impact report be required before the project can move forward.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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From left, Miss Lake County Outstanding Teen Lauren Berlinn, Miss North Counties Nicole Honaker, Miss North Coast Maggie Stewart and Miss Lake County Amanda Betat. Photo courtesy of Trish Combs.

LAKE COUNTY – Miss Lake County Amanda Betat and Miss Lake County Outstanding Teen Lauren Berlinn have been keeping busy with appearances and events.

Betat and Berlinn recently made appearances with the new Miss North Coast Maggie Stewart and Miss

North Counties Nicole Honaker, said Trish Combs, one of the Miss Lake County pageant directors.

The young women were on hand for the Jan. 12 crowning of new Miss Mendocino Stephanie Paige. Also appearing at the crowning was Miss California Melissa Chaty – a Ukiah native – who will take part in the TLC Channel program Miss America's Reality Check before the Miss America pageant takes place on Jan. 26 at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas.

Visit the Miss Lake County organization online at www.misslakecounty.org.

The new Miss Mendocino Stephanie Paige at her Jan. 12 crowning. Photo courtesy of Trish Combs.

Miss California Melissa Chaty at Stephanie Paige's Jan. 12 crowning. Chaty is taking part in the Miss America Pageant Jan. 26. Photo courtesy of Trish Combs.

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The Sea Scouts raise a US flag on the Pearl Harbor Survivors Chapter Memorial Mast that was flown over the fallen USS Arizona. Photo by Elizabeth Larson.

LAKEPORT – Sixty-six years ago, they were little more than boys, caught in a battle that would change their lives and their country. {sidebar id=44}

On Friday morning, four local survivors of the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the widow of a fifth gathered to mark the 66^th anniversary, surrounded by veterans of all eras and community members who came to honor them for their service.

The heroes and focus of the day were Clarence “Bud” Boner, USS Tennessee; WK Slater, USS Pennsylvania; Walt Urmann, USS Blue; Jim Harris, USS Dobbin; and Alice Darrow, a Navy nurse and widow of Dean Darrow, who was aboard the USS West Virginia.

The ceremony, which began at 9 a.m., was held at the Pearl Harbor Survivors Chapter's Memorial Mast in Library Park, built to honor them by the Lakeport Rotary.

The chilly, windy morning was marked by Chaplain Woody Hughes' invocation, a bugler playing “Call to Assembly” and the singing of the national anthem by Doug Patten, Mark Grover, Dr. Richard Drury and Marty Hinman.

The Pearl Harbor Survivors presented a flag flown over the fallen USS Arizona, which the US Coast Guard Auxiliary and the Sea Scouts received and raised on the memorial mast.

Ronnie Bogner, the ceremony's master of ceremonies, sported the Pearl Harbor Survivors' “official uniform,” which he explained consists of a favorite Hawaiian shirt and white pants.

Bogner said Lake County is home to one of the largest groups of those who were at Pearl Harbor.

Supervisor Rob Brown, on behalf of the Board of Supervisors, presented the survivors' chapter with a proclamation honoring the day and their service.

Lakeport Mayor Buzz Bruns also paid tribute to the group and their symbolic mast. “We're so proud to have this monument in our city.”

The day's featured speaker was Andy Peterson, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and the county's former redevelopment director.

Peterson called the attack on Pearl Harbor was “absolutely a seminal event,” one he compared to other important moments in US history, from the Revolutionary War forward.

“Yet, somehow, Pearl Harbor stands out among all the rest,” Peterson said.

The “world-shaking” event, and the US response to it, ended the country's diplomatic isolation, said Peterson, leading to the world being a “far better place today than it would have been.”

He quoted a speech on veterans given by President Ronald Reagan, in which Reagan said the young men who died to defend the US gave up two lives – the one they were living and the one yet to come.

The most solemn moments of the ceremony were during the tolling for the dead. Hughes read the names of 27 local Pearl Harbor Survivors Chapter members who died between 1988 and 2005, with a Sea Scout tolling a bell for each name.

Members of the American Legion's Kelseyville and Clearlake posts, the United Veterans Council, Veterans of Foreign Wars and Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 951 came for the ceremony. Also in attendance was a contingent of officers from the California Highway Patrol in dress uniform.

Harris and the survivors group thanked their fellow veterans for coming, and said that they hoped the other veterans groups would use the memorial mast for their own ceremonies as well.

At 9:55 a.m. – 7:55 a.m. Honolulu time, the historical time of the attack – the flags were lowered to half-staff in honor of the dead. The United Veterans Council Military Funeral Honors Team fired three rifle salvos in salute and the team's bugler played “Taps.” The flag was left at half-staff until sundown.

As a special tribute to the Pearl Harbor Survivors group, the Clear Lake CHP Office arranged for a CHP helicopter to fly over Library Park.

For a gallery of photos courtesy of the United Veterans Council Military Funeral Honors Team, click on

http://lakeconews.com/component/option,com_wrapper/Itemid,37/.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Andy Peterson, a retired Army lieutenant colonel, speaks at the Friday ceremony. Photo by Elizabeth Larson.

Pearl Harbor survivor Walt Urmann, foreground, talks about his ship, the USS Blue. Master of Ceremonies Ronnie Bogner stands nearby. Photo by Elizabeth Larson.

CHP officers came to show their respects at the Friday ceremony. Photo courtesy of the United Veterans Council Military Funeral Honors Team.

A CHP helicopter flew over Library Park at the end of the ceremony in honor of the Pearl Harbor survivors. Photo by Ginny Craven.

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Walter Urmann, USS Blue

On Tuesday, Dec. 9, 1941, two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the USS Blue DD387 was reprovisioned and returned to patrol, said Walt Urmann, 84, then an 18-year-old seaman first class aboard the Blue.

Two days earlier the Blue would narrowly escape Pearl Harbor, powering up under heavy Japanese fire. Urmann said the Japanese tried bombing the ship as it made its way out of the harbor.

He would remain about the Blue as she made her way to the Marshall Islands in February 1942 for a raid.

In late August, following the landings at Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands, the Blue was taking transports and supplies to the Solomons when she was struck by three torpedoes.

“I saw 'em coming,” he said, noting that the Blue's stern was blown off.

The Blue was scuttled on Aug. 23, 1942, near Guadalcanal. “The last I saw was 387 on the bow,” before she sank into 3,600 feet of water, Urmann said.

He would later travel to Australia and then the Philippines. “I joined in January in 1941, and I got out in January 1946,” he said, with all of that time spent overseas. He later returned to the Navy for a year and a half during the Korean War, finally getting out in 1951 at the rank of first class petty officer.

Urmann later worked for Pacific Telephone and Telegraph, retiring in August 1981. He's lived in Clearlake for 26 years. His wife, Iris, died in December 2005.

WK Slater, USS Pennsylvania

After Pearl Harbor, 17-year-old WK Slater and the World War I-era Pennsylvania – which, Naval records report, was the Arizona's sister ship – later were set to San Francisco, where the ship underwent repairs. He was there for nearly a year before being transported to Washington.

While in San Francisco, Slater met his future wife, Helen, in a little restaurant on Market Street where her sister worked.

From Washington Slater was sent to the South Pacific, where he worked with a squadron of PBY rescue planes carrying out “dumbo missions,” which picked up men from the water. The group had 100 saves, he said.

Along the way he also had an adventurous stopover in Sidney, Australia. “We needn't go into that conversion any further,” he laughed.

Slater, who was raised in a Catholic orphanage in San Diego, said he didn't join the Navy for any patriotic reasons. “I just wanted to get out and, like the ad said, 'Join the navy and see the world.'”

He left the Navy on Nov. 5, 1945, after four years, four months and five days of service.

“The worst day I ever spent at sea was my last day,” he said. That's when a ship he was on came across the Columbia River bar and hit a swell, nearly flipping over.

The event, he said, hurt quite a few men and made headlines in the Oregonian.

After he got out of the Navy, he worked as a truck driver and married Helen. He first visited Lakeport in 1948, bought property in 1955 and eventually retired and built a home in Lakeport in 1984.

WK and Helen Slater were married for 60 years. Helen died in July. He has a daughter, Leslie, granddaughter and two great-granddaughters.

Dean Darrow, USS West Virginia; Alice Beck Darrow, Mare Island

Dean Darrow was a 23-year-old fire controllman about the USS West Virginia, moored next to the doomed USS Arizona. When the ship had listed sharply to port after being hit by a torpedo during the attack, Darrow had been thrown off the boat, according ot his widow, Alice.

When a rescue boat pulled Dean Darrow from the water, Japanese planes came through and strafed the surface of the water. He had been hit in the back and taken to the hospital, only to be released when they couldn't find any serious injury.

Following the attack he continued to suffer dizzy spells and feel sick, said his wife. He was taken to the USS Solace, a hospital ship, where they removed his appendix, but still there was no improvement.

Finally, a more thorough examination revealed he had a bullet lodged in his heart, she said.

“They sent him back to Mare Island,” she said. “That's where I met him.”

Nurse Alice Beck, 22, had joined the Navy after graduating from nursing school in Oakland in 1941, and was assigned to Mare Island.

A Stanford doctor came to look at Darrow, telling him he wouldn't live long unless they removed the bullet. But she explained that heart surgery wasn't common in 1942.

Darrow asked the young nurse, whose nickname was Becky, “Miss Becky, if I ever come back from this, will you go out on liberty with me?”

She said she would.

Darrow underwent surgery on April 17, 1942, having walked around for more than five months with a bullet in his heart, she said. “He was very lucky.”

After he underwent surgery she was assigned as his special duty nurse. When he woke up and saw her, he reminded her that they were going to go on liberty together.

And they did, six weeks later, taking a trip to San Francisco for dinner.

“We were married on the first of August in 1942,” she said. “We had almost 50 years of wedded life, which was very nice.”

The couple had four children. She stayed in nursing and he worked for Sperry Marine Service, repairing compasses and gyroscopes.

They retired and came to Lake County in 1977. Dean Darrow died of a heart attack in 1991.

Jim Harris, USS Dobbin

Jim Harris, who had been only 16 at the time of the attack, served aboard the USS Dobbin. But Pearl Harbor wouldn't be the only momentous battle he would see.

He would later find himself, as a 19-year-old second class petty officer and sonar man, at Slapton Sands, a preparation exercise for D-Day where thousands of men died. On June 6, 1944, he was part of the D-Day invasion of Normany, aboard the destroyer USS McCook (DD 496).

The McCook and USS Carmick were among the ships that fired on German tanks and guns that were targeting soldiers on Omaha beach.

The McCook, with Harris aboard, later took part in Operation Anvil, the invasion of southern France, where Vichy forces helped resist the Allied invasion.

By the end of 1944, Harris was sent home to the US because of an injury suffered earlier in the war in the South Pacific. He settled down with new wife, Helen, and eventually they made their way to Lake County.

Where they are today

At 83, Harris is a robust man, who is likely among the youngest Pearl Harbor survivors still alive. He estimates there are as many as nine Pearl Harbor survivors living in Lake County, with seven of them involved in the Pearl Harbor Survivors Chapter 23 North, which serves Lake and Mendocino counties.

For those who aren't active, Harris encouraged them to come out and join their fellow survivors. “We would love to have them."

He remains active in local veterans groups, and returned to Pearl Harbor for the 50^th anniversary of the attack.

“Everybody came away from there with a different attitude,” he said. “Only time has made a difference to us.”

Urmann, 84, also stays active in the group and in Pearl Harbor-related events. Last December, he and Darrow flew to Hawaii for the 65^th anniversary commemoration of the Pearl Harbor attack.

“We sat right in front of Tom Brokaw when he made the speech,” Urmann said.

Today, Alice Darrow, 88, and other Pearl Harbor survivors talk to local school children about Pearl Harbor.

Darrow even talked Slater into giving talks at the schools, although he says that much of his memory has dimmed over the years.

There's no arguing that his sense of humor is still razor sharp. Watching him banter with his fellow survivors, he's quick with a joke or a witty retort.

It's important for the children to know the history of the battle, said Darrow. She said the children are thrilled to meet the Pearl Harbor survivors firsthand.

She even takes with her the bullet the surgeons removed from her husband's heart.

Alice Darrow said that the bullet left a hole in his heart, which she filled with her love.

E-mail Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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