Lake County supervisors cut the taxable value of 20 of E&J Gallo’s vineyard parcels by more than half Tuesday, after the county assessor’s office found that most of the vines were gone.
The supervisors, sitting as the county’s Board of Equalization to hear property tax appeals, approved agreements, called stipulations, between Gallo and the assessor on a 5-0 vote. No one from Gallo attended, and no supervisor asked a question before the vote, the meeting video shows.
The 20 parcels cover about 1,780 acres along Perini, Seigler Canyon and Murphy Springs roads near Lower Lake. The county had them on its 2025-26 tax roll at $34.8 million. The agreed value is $16 million, a drop of $18.8 million, or 54%.
What the assessor found
Each of the 20 agreements gives the same reason. Staff from the assessor’s office inspected the land and wrote that “most of the vineyards had been removed, while the remaining vineyards were in a state of neglect and were not being irrigated.” The buildings showed “varying degrees of deterioration,” the agreement for the first parcel says.
The steepest cut was to the vines. On the 15 parcels that had vines on the tax roll, the county had valued them at $8.3 million. The new value is $413,808, a drop of 95%. On five parcels, the vines are now valued at zero.
Land values fell less than the vines did. On two parcels, the value of the buildings went up, because the county’s original assessment had missed two of the three mobile homes on each, the agreements say.
The agreements don’t say when the vines came out or why, or how many acres were pulled.
Gallo, the Modesto wine company, made its first land purchase in Lake County in 2012, when it bought the Snows Lake Vineyard in Lower Lake, Lake County News reported at the time. A Gallo spokesperson told the paper that the purchase covered 2,000 acres, 800 of them planted. The county records don’t say whether the 20 parcels were part of that purchase.
Gallo asked for less of a cut
Gallo filed the appeals in November 2025 through Ryan LLC, a firm with an office in Scottsdale, Arizona. The applications argued that the land was worth less on the market than the value the county had on its tax roll. They asked to be treated as claims for a refund.
Gallo’s appeals valued the 20 parcels at about $17.1 million combined. The value the county agreed to is about $1.1 million below that. On 12 of the parcels, the agreed value is lower than the figure Gallo’s agent wrote on the appeal.
Gallo filed two more appeals on other parcels, then withdrew them in October, a withdrawal form shows. The board accepted those withdrawals the same day.
What it means for taxes
The agreements use Proposition 8, a 1978 ballot measure. It lets an assessor lower a property’s value for tax purposes when its market value falls below its value at purchase, adjusted each year for inflation. The cut is temporary. The assessor must review the value every year, and it can go back up as the market recovers, but never above that adjusted purchase value, according to the state Board of Equalization.
California’s base property tax rate is 1% of assessed value. At that rate, an $18.8 million drop in value means about $188,000 less in property tax for the year. Gallo’s 2025-26 tax bills on the 20 parcels came to about $390,800, the copies attached to the appeals show. Those bills include voter-approved charges above the 1% rate, so the full drop is likely larger.
‘Massive removals of vineyards’
Later that day, the board heard a different vineyard owner’s appeal. Vice Chair Jessica Pyska spoke about the Gallo agreements during that hearing.
“I have been working with the Assessor’s Office because we just approved these stipulations where we had massive removals of vineyards, and this is a way for vineyard owners to temporarily reduce their property taxes, hopefully incentivizing them to keep the vines in,” Pyska said. “So this is a pathway forward.”
Get the Gazette by email
The day’s stories from Sonoma, Napa, Lake and Mendocino counties, picked by the editor. Free.