Since mid August of this year, fires have continued to burn across California and on to Oregon and Washington. The smoke has extended from Vancouver to San Diego.
The Wine Country in Northern California has been singed by flames and choked with smoke. Here at Silverpoint Cellars, we’ve seen two primary effects on our wine business;
* We have lost our entire crop of Red grapes for 2020. These grapes “died on the vine” as drought, record high September temperatures and 45 days of exposure to smoke caused dehydration, shriveled berries and smoke taint. This is a repeat of 2017 when we lost our Red crop during the catastrophic Napa/Sonoma fire of early October.
* Better news is that the large, sophisticated wine making facility we use to make wine and store our full barrels of finished wine escaped damage. This facility serves many, many small wineries like ours for whom owning your own equipment and space makes no sense. As you can see from the video below taken on September 28, fire came to its very doorstep. Firefighters and winery workers stopped its advance. Destruction of this building and its valuable stacks of wine in barrels would have been devastating.
So, it’s on to 2021! The smoke is dissipating very gradually and our first rain in six months is expected this weekend.