West Coast Wineries Remain Hopeful for 2020 Vintage

Producers in California as well as in Oregon, where more than one million acres burned in early September, are still assessing the damage, much of which may not be known until they are able to test their wines further along in the fermentation process for traces of smoke compounds—known as smoke taint. 

Of course, these devastating fires occurred in a year already marred by a pandemic that has forced wineries across the world to reassess how they produce and sell wine. 

Fortunately for C. Mondavi, which makes Charles Krug wines, the Glass Fire—coming not long after the LNU Lightening Complex of fires, which also affected five California counties including Napa and Sonoma—had largely burned out before reaching the estate. The property’s green, irrigated vineyards served as a firebreak, and there’s a creek in back of the estate property, says Judd Wallenbrock, CEO.  

Once it was clear all of the winery’s employees were safe and the estate itself wasn’t damaged, Wallenbrock says he and his team thought about what they could do for the valley’s community given their strategic location near the base of the fire. 

C. Mondavi’s chief operating officer, Jeff Richardson, used to work at Pacific Gas & Electric Co, the region’s utility, which needed to get into the area to deal with downed power lines. So the winery reached out to offer 11 largely unused acres of flat land they had that primarily served as a leach field as well as a garden for a nearby campus of the Culinary Institute of America.

“We were strategically located almost in the perfect spot for a base camp,” Wallenbrock says. “It enabled them to get to these hot spots way faster then they would have been able to.”

At Larkmead Winery, north of C. Mondavi in Napa, winemaker Dan Petroski recalls having to shift gears from a pandemic strategy of keeping all the doors in the winery and cellar open to reduce the number of surfaces that would have to be touched, to closing all the doors to keep smoke out in the wake of the LNU fires that started on Aug. 17. 

Fortunately, Larkmead was able to harvest most of its grapes by Aug. 31, well before experiencing the worst smoke days, and before the Glass Fire, which came much closer to its vineyards. The property was largely spared by the nearby Napa River and Selby Creek, and the vineyards themselves, although Petroski recalls arriving at the winery at 5 a.m. one morning and stamping out a knee-high spot fire that was burning in front of the winery, scorching a nearly 40-foot tree nearby. 

“We were very close to having the wind blow in a certain direction, and having the whole place up in flames,” Petroski says. 

At Ehlers Estate, which, like C. Mondavi is located in the valley between Highway 29 and the Silverado Trail, the fires were fortunately kept at bay, but winemaker and general manager Laura Diaz-Munoz, who lives in Santa Rosa, in Sonoma County, was evacuated for 10 days during the Glass Fire with her family. Still, she says she made it to the winery to check on fermentation that was underway. 

By mid-October, her employees were back, and they finished harvesting the winery’s Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc, knowing that the grapes, surrounded for weeks by smoke, may not in the end produce wines they can bottle. According to Diaz-Munoz, the board of the Leducq Foundation, which oversees the winery founded by the French entrepreneurs and philanthropists Jean and Sylviane Leducq, were curious to learn more about the potential impact of smoke on the grapes, and what the winery could potentially do to mitigate it. 

“It’s an opportunity to rethink what we are doing, how we are growing,” Diaz-Munoz says. “It’s interesting to also understand how it’s affecting certain areas, and certain vineyards, not as much.” 

Petroski, too, found that on Larkmead’s 110-acre, contiguous, three-vineyard estate that he detected smoke taint on early samples from one block, and then none on another only 20 to 30 yards away. 

Earlier this week, Petroski tasted all of his wines and believes he will be able to bottle 95% of them. Yet he knows that smoke compounds in wine can get worse over time. “We have to be mindful of it as we’re managing and making wine over the course of the next 18 to 20 months, before we bottle,” he says. 

C. Mondavi had picked all of its white grapes and lighter reds, including Pinot Noir, before the fires hit, but they had harvested only 5% to 10% of their Bordeaux varietals, Wallenbrock says. From years past, they had learned it’s not wise to pick when a fire is burning, for obvious safety reasons, but also because if smoke is in the air, it’s more likely to get into the wine. “We waited until the air cleared out,” he says. 

So far, the winery is not detecting smoke taint and Wallenbrock is optimistic. In 2017, the Napa Valley was surrounded by a ring of fire and there were also significant concerns with smoke. Yet, he says, the winery’s 2017 Cabernet “is tasting beautifully right now.”

The 2020 vintage “while challenging, is not lost,” Stacey Dolan Capitani, vice president of marketing of the Napa Valley Vintner Association said in an email, noting 80% of its members plan to bottle their wine. “The 2020 vintage will not be absent from the history books,” Capitani said.

In Sonoma, 25% to 30% of harvest will go unpicked because of the pandemic and the fires, Karissa Kruse, president, Sonoma County Winegrowers, said in a statement. Kruse encouraged wine lovers to “cherish” the “hard-earned and well-loved” wines that are eventually produced this year, as a way to support growers, workers, families, and the community, adding, “We are hoping for a long, boring 2021 season.”