Wine and food industries lead the way in raising $150k for Mendocino Coast Clinics with the Crab & Wine Festival

Will a decline in wine prices hurt local health care?

Every year, the big top goes up and scrumptious aromas waft out. The tent that takes up the entire block next to Century 21 in Fort Bragg hosts one of the most important events of the year. The fundraiser for the Mendocino Coast Clinics’ Crab & Wine Festival culminated last weekend. The big white tent was packed with top wineries, local restaurant chefs, and a wide variety of foodies from our local dibbling, nibbling and upscale eating world. Our food business is as prestigious and fancy as our area is, otherwise economically impoverished. 

The often-reviled wine industry puts up a lot of money to support this half of the medical establishment that keeps our town healthy. The other half is Adventist Health Mendocino Coast Hospital, which gets similar support during Winesong each year and is also supported by taxes every one of us who own property pays.

Lucresha Renteria, Executive Director of Mendocino Coast Clinics, said the event, which spends as little as possible to raise as much money as possible for the cause, did well this year.

“We know we grossed at least $155k, we are still counting.  We believe the number will climb and then we need to have a full accounting of the expenses. So final numbers won’t be ready for a couple of months. We are very very grateful to our sponsors who help keep the costs covered and means having more net profit from our event efforts!”

— Lucresha Renteria, Mendocino Coast Clinics

The amount of money raised was particularly good news in light of the fact that the wine industry has followed the cannabis industry in a steep decline—both caused by the drop in price of their products.

To the outsider, it’s very difficult to tell the hospital from the clinic as one stretches into the other. There are clinics behind the helipad all along the back of the hospital, although the independent dialysis clinic and the Redwood Community Services treatment center is also in the mix, along with private medical offices. Adventist has a clinic off the back parking lot of the MCC headquarters. Nearby is the MCC Blue Door Clinic. MCC has a suboxone clinic for those recovering from fentanyl in the old real estate/newspaper office. I find it amazing how well the two medical providers work together. But times are tough and the future is uncertain for everyone in health care. Will the drop in wine prices impact the rainy day funds for the two coast providers? Could or should one run the other someday? One thing is for sure, more of us should be involved in local healthcare. One can attend Hospital District board meetings, which are public meetings. They tax us and rent their land to Adventist. They don’t run the hospital but could be a key player in the future. 

The Coasts two unrelated providers of health care have narrowly escaped shutdowns and grown into dually providing the needs of an increasingly older and poorer population while also constantly serving wealthier tourists having unplanned misadventures.

Unlike the hospital, The Clinics have no tax base, and no Mendocino Coast Healthcare Foundation, but serve many needs the hospital cannot and vice versa.. In the 1970s a part-time MD and a small staff of volunteers set up a clinic in a tiny office in Mendocino with the intention of providing medical care, first aid, and treatment for the growing population of back-to-the-landers who were setting up communes up and down the coast. At that time, with only two doctors in Fort Bragg serving the entire coast the need for medical services was a crisis. It was one of the “free clinics” that sprouted during the more communal 1970s. Although the Clinic did charge, then, as now, few people could afford to pay.

They depended quite a bit on good Karma in those days. Once, when the Clinic was out of money, a visitor to the coast was so impressed with the treatment his grandson had received in such a sparse space that he made a huge donation. That one gift gave the operation the means to better support its lofty intentions. But providence could not be depended upon forever. In the 1980s the county health department stepped in and moved the operation to Fort Bragg. This was great until it wasn’t. Political winds changed and the closure of the Clinic’s Fir Street office was announced. This fired up the community, led by the local chapter of the Gray Panthers, senior activists. 

Local residents petitioned the Board of Supervisors to “spin-off” the Fort Bragg office to not-for-profit 501(c)3 status. On July 1, 1994, the remade Mendocino Coast Clinics was “officially” founded with the assistance of the Public Health Administrator, Carol Mordhorst. A steadfast group of seven staff members made the transition and came together with their commitment to a single mission—to provide access to quality health care on the North Coast, regardless of the ability to pay.

The original staff, along with Paula Cohen, included Fred Dumas III, MD, as the part-time medical director; NPs Jayne Bush and Michele Tellier; LVN Judy Green, Dianne Skinner at reception, and Lucresha Renteria. Initially hired as a translator, Renteria tackled the duties of reception and billing as well, doing many jobs along the way before taking over as executive director.

The need for more and more services became greater and greater as the medical industry evolved to make it harder for single practitioners to come to the Coast and set up shop. Soon, the clinics had added a behavioral health department, next dental care. Today, a person on MediCal can get emergency care at Adventist hospital, then follow up at the Clinics, and get established with a general practitioner, a dentist or mental health provider. The hospital also has its own clinics, once private offices across the street from the hospital, but both are often full. 

Fast forward to 1999, the Crab and Wine Days started at  Crown Hall in Mendocino where visitors and locals alike could taste crab cakes and sip Mendocino wines. MCC was surprised to learn that they had been chosen to be the beneficiary of whatever profits would be made that first year—and gratefully accepted a check for five hundred dollars. Crab and Wine Days is now a 10-day party culminating in the big white tent now and the gift to the clinic is over six figures every year.

Now it would be unthinkable not to have both the hospital and the clinics. Many of those old Hippies are geriatric clients now, along with an aging population of former logger and fishermen families. Poverty rates are high and the Coast has a much older population than any other area of the county. The average age of hospital admission in Fort Bragg is over 70, while Willits and Ukiah, both high by state standards, are in the mid to late 60s.. All summer, Fort Bragg’s hospital periodically gets jammed up with tourists having so much fun they sprain their ankle or worse. The uneven seasonal flow of patients makes staffing much more challenging on the Coast than those inland places. Much funding works on average patient counts. But staffing for averages can mean not having enough when a big flow comes. Patients flow into the hospital from tourists visiting all of the wine and art tourism country in the county, from the Anderson Valley to Point Arena to Westport. Both the Clinic and the hospital are major employers for the impoverished community so beloved by tourists. 

I was on my way to work at the hospital and had to rush to get these pictures. I was amazed at how many of the big foodies were set up inside. Taking photos is nearly impossible and an annual challenge for me. The event is set up with all the fancy vendors in a circle matching the tent with light coming in behind them, and not inconsiderable rain last week. To take a photo, I had to get people to come out of the light and most were too busy. It was packed!  Inside the tent were lots of prestigious givers from the food world, enjoying the crab and a little wine. I got to have fun talking to the cool guys from Gnar Bar, a new place in the space across the street from Merrie Smith’s Mendocino Cafe. They won the people’s choice award for their crab cakes and finished third in the professional crab cakes category. Hmm? Oh well. Also I enjoyed meeting the owners of the KW Saltwater Grill, along with our birthday server, Amanda. However, the effort to take their photo backlit by the sun failed and the images were awful, sorry ladies! Also met up with my public pal Joe Seta and the Thanksgiving Coffee booth, as well as Cucina Verona, nice folks I know well enough to ask to get out of the booth for photos and as you can see they turned out. I should have had the Harts move out more from that sun. I was wishing my late friend Keith Wyner was there to give me advice on this photography challenge. The prize area was set up with auction items to be as tempting as you would expect from someone from the tasting room world. Some fun and odd prizes. Saw Loreto Rojas also, who with Diana Coryat was preparing for a show on Coastal Latino history the next day in Mendo, which I missed along with volunteer work at the Lions, thanks to an extra long work day.

The opulence inside a tent in the rain was the perfect metaphor for the relationship between our wineries, crab fishermen, and the local and tourist communities.

Here are the winners from the MCC Crab & Wine Festival event:

Professional Wine Tasting (white wine that goes with crab)

1. Husch Vineyards – Renegade SV
2. Roederer Estate – Brut
3. Toulouse Winery – Gewurztraminer

Professional Crab Cakes

1. Little River Inn – Little River, CA
2. Noyo River Grill – Fort Bragg, CA
3. Gnar Bar – Mendocino, CA

People’s Choice – Winery (favorite winery vote, not for an individual wine)

1. Barra of Mendocino
2. Maple Creek Winery (Artevino)
3. Toulouse Winery

People’s Choice – Crab Cakes

1. Gnar Bar – Mendocino, CA
2. Westport Hotel – Westport, CA
3. KW Saltwater Grill – Fort Bragg, CA