California wild fires of 2017-2018-2019-2020 and the wine industry
In California we are accustom to wild fire season but we’ve seen nothing like this - the last 4 years have been devastating. I’m about to throw a bunch of numbers at you, which I know after a while can seem somewhat burdensome, but I’m trying to make a point. If you do the math (which doesn’t account for areas that have burned more than once) almost 7% of California has burned during the last 4 years. An incredible amount of people have been directly or indirectly effected by these fires, ourselves included. As Bob Dylan said, the times, they are a-changin’.
This year 2020, like the 3 years prior, were fire years here in California. In 2017 there were 9,560 fires and a total of 1,548,429 acres burned. A major fire, the Redwood Valley Complex Fire, totaling some 36,523 acres, was started by the winds and fallen powerlines in Potter Valley in late October that spread to Lake County and Redwood Valley. This caused many of the late ripening varieties such as Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, and Cabernet Sauvignon to be full of smokey aromas and flavors much like a campfire or an ashtray. We were lucky that most of our grapes were harvested before that point. Several small wineries, vineyards, and many homes were burned Mendocino and Lake County by this fire. In Sonoma and Napa, the Tubbs, Nuns, Pocket and Atlas fires burned over 152,344 acres. Again, several wineries and vineyards were burned in these fires. Even when the fire was so far away, there were times when the smoke was so thick in the air it rained ash, blocked out the sun, and cast an eerie red darkness over us that was so dark you needed your car headlights on when driving. Which left us with no desire to see what it looked like closer to the actual fires. See photo, which was taken at 1pm.
2018 was the second largest fire year of the last 4 years and it affected us personally the most. There were 8,527 fires in California which destroyed 1,975,086 acres. The Snell Fire in Napa burned 2,490 acres and the Pawnee Fire in Lake County burned 15,185 acres. The biggest fire by far was the Mendocino Complex Fire which was composed of the Ranch and River fires that burned 459,000 acres and the County Fire in Lake and Napa Counties that burned close to 100,000 acres. Some vineyards and some homes in Lake, Mendocino, and Napa were burned but the biggest damaged was due to smoke taint in the grapes. I personally lost some of my grapes in our Potter Valley vineyard; our Pinot Blanc, Pinot Grigio, and Pinot Meunier, all of which accounted for about 50 tons worth of grapes. We were lucky however, for I know several growers in Mendocino who lost 100’s of tons of grapes to smoke taint to the large wineries of Constellation, Jackson Family, and Treasury Wines, who are large buyers here. I am sure that 10’s of thousands of tons of grapes here were left on the vine due to smoke taint or a lack of demand. Most of these growers did not have crop insurance to cover their loses because for a very long time there was a notion that only “bad farmers” needed it. Crop insurance only covers between 65%-75% of the grapes effected, which is obviously better than nothing.
2019 was also a fire year in California with several large fires happening in the north coast of California. There were 7,860 fires in California affecting 259,823 acres. We in Mendocino and Napa got a small reprieve from the fires with only Sonoma being affected with the Kincade Fire which was 77,758 acres which was started again by PG&E power lines. Again, some vineyards were burned and there were small incidences of smoke taint damage in grapes in Napa and Sonoma from this fire.
-Gregory Graziano