Fires Finally Reach California Wine Country

Until last weekend, California wine country had – knock on hardwood, preferably fire-resistant maple – so far largely avoided fires in 2021, even as the largest wildfire in state history continues to rage nearly uncontrolled in the northeast part of the state.

That changed over the weekend as the Caldor Fire, which had been a small blaze in the hills north of Lake Tahoe, exploded to threaten El Dorado County, a high-elevation area that is one of the state’s most underrated fine-wine regions. The fire has destroyed several structures already and a rapidly-called evacuation has led to bumper-to-bumper traffic on the few roads out of the rural area. Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Tuesday for the county.

“I can see the smoke plume,” said Les Heinsen, owner of Element 79 Vineyards in Fair Play. “It’s probably 7 to 10 miles east of us. There’s no smoke over here; it’s all going north. I feel bad for friends. We do have friends that have lost homes up in Grizzly Flats.”

Then another big fire burst out Wednesday afternoon in Lake County, just north of Napa County and the source of many grapes that go into Napa Valley wines (which are allowed to have 15 percent grapes from another county.) Areas around Clear Lake are being evacuated at press time.

Smoke from those fires and the record-setting Dixie Fire started troubling the San Francisco Bay Area on Wednesday, including Napa and Sonoma Counties. But the most recent research on smoke taint indicates that high atmospheric smoke from far away likely does not cause smoke taint in wine grapes, even if it causes burning eyes for people trying to harvest them.

Wineries in Napa and Sonoma are wary, as the state is in the middle of a drought of historic proportions. And there was reason to be nervous Wednesday morning, as the utility company PG&E cut off power to 8000 customers in the two counties, including much of the city of Calistoga, as a pre-emptive move to prevent predicted high winds for sparking fires from power lines.

Craig Becker, general manager of Somerston Wine Co. in St. Helena, was without power when I called him Wednesday morning. Last year about 1400 of Somerston’s 1600 acres burned, though most of that was forest; they did lose 10 acres of vineyards. He and his workers are still doing the exhausting work of clearing out the dead trees, which at this point are nothing more than – sorry to say this – firewood.

“I’ve lived in northern California for 30 years and the last four years have been riddled by fire,” Becker told Wine-Searcher. “It was not something we’re used to but now it’s becoming very normal. How do you manage a business that creates a perishable product that’s affected by smoke year after year? We were joking around that there needs to be an agricultural therapist. It’s trying. It’s emotional. There’s a lot of post-traumatic stress that we didn’t realize for everyone, kids and grownups.”

Facing the fires

Learning to deal with the stress has become part of the lifestyle.

“I have been conditioned to accept fire as a part of life here,” said Lisa Mattson, an employee of Jordan Vineyard and survivor of the Tubbs Fire of 2017. “Coming up on my fourth year of fire season, and I’ve learned not to be worried until I get the alert for our area. El Dorado is a long ways away, and so is the Dixie Fire. We’re just excited with how good the fruit is looking, and the fact that harvest’s start is near. And there’s no fire in our area right now.”

That’s not the case in El Dorado County. When I called Boeger Winery proprietor Justin Boeger, he was up on the roof of his house installing a sprinkler system similar to the one he installed on top of his winery.

“In the last few years, wildfire awareness has been a lot more in the forefront since the King Fire burned here a couple years ago,” Boeger told Wine-Searcher. “Historically we probably didn’t give it the attention we should have.”

Boeger said that thanks to a county agricultural program he installed overhead sprinklers in his vineyard in addition to the regular drip irrigation sprinklers.

“If the fire gets close to us we can turn those on and irrigate 100 acres around us,” Boeger said. “We’ve cleared up all the underbrush around the buildings. It’s like we live in the middle of a giant lot. I have some level of concern but I really feel like I’ve cut the grass down to the ground. I’ve never been in a wildfire so maybe I’m speaking from naivete. We have bulldozers here so we can do firebreaks. We have hydrants and hoses here. I do have concern but I don’t feel overly worried. But that’s why we’re taking these additional measures.”

Boeger said he still has fire insurance, but he pays more than before for less coverage. Heinsen’s insurance carrier refused to renew him a couple years ago, so now he buys expensive fire insurance from California’s state-run FAIR plan, the insurer of last resort.

“I was more nervous last night. Right now I’m just in reality,” Heinsen said. “We hope that it’s not going to come this way but it’s getting somebody right now and that’s not good. The vines I think will be fine. We have a couple ravines that separate our upper and lower vineyard. There’s nothing to burn. Our vines are healthy and looking good.

“We do have crop insurance for smoke taint, if it happens. We’ll start taking measurements to do a baseline. And then we’ll start doing microfermentations and go from there. It used to be we just had to do one fermentation and that was it. Now we have to do all these little things.”

Neither Boeger nor Heinsen plans to harvest earlier because of the fire threat.

“The reds are still about four weeks out,” Heinsen said. “We picked some Viognier this morning. We’ll probably pick for rosé in about a week. If the fire comes, it comes. I don’t think we’ll try to pick any grapes early. They would be lost anyway.”