California wildfires largely spared vineyards in recent years, but news reports from Australia indicate that as much as a third of the 3,300 ha of vines in the Adelaide Hills region have been destroyed by the Cudlee Creek fire in South Australia.
A spokesman for the Adelaide Hills Wine Region said the area destroyed or damaged produces the equivalent of 794,000 cases of wine. “Heat, radiant heat damage, has wiped out a lot of crops, but we expect vines to recover from that if growers can rebuild their irrigation. If they can do that quickly, we’ll see them back quickly. Where they’ve been burnt quickly, it’s a complete rip out and restart.”