You can disregard those apoplectic stories about the entire 2020 harvest in Sonoma and Napa counties being ruined by smoke from those awful wildfires.
Thus far, in the midst of two of the three largest wildfires in the state’s history, only two wineries out of 4,200 in California have suffered damage, says Nancy Light, communications chief at Wine Institute.
It’s far too early to jump to any definitive conclusions about how much wine could be impacted, experts talking on a California Association of Winegrape Growers call yesterday noted. But, they said, for there to be significant smoke exposure damage, several factors have to come into play including how close the winery is to the fire, how fresh the smoke is — it has to be within the first 24 hours.
What makes it tricky is that one vineyard could suffer some smoke damage and another next door will be just fine. Indeed, they said, its possible for one part of a vineyard to be fine and another part a short distance away to have some smoke damage.
Even in that circumstance, it’s possible to in at least some cases blend some smoke-tainted wine with other liquids so that the smoke is not detectable.
“WE can’t make any predictions about how the smoke will impact the harvest,” Light said. “We’ve got a good month ahead of us.” Still, it’s clear that vintners aren’t going to release a poor quality wine.
The harvest itself is about 10 days ahead of schedule. It was always expected to be a somewhat smaller vintage, which is good news because there’s currently a good supply of wine in storage.
Comment: So what explains those stories about the entire harvest being ruined? Closest explanation we can think of is that the journalist has to have something to write about or broadcast. With only 2 of 4,200 wineries damaged, the next possible topic is smoke damage. But since almost no wine has been made yet — and that, people on the CAWG call said, is the only way to tell if there is detectable smoke damage — some writers turn to doomsday, poorly sourced forecasts of The End of The California Wine Industry As We Know It. We’ve never been afraid of making a forecast provided it is well-sourced from multiple experts.
Let’s hope the all the rosiest predictions come true, I think the bigger problem is the consumer’s perception of the 2020 vintage. Not Good.
Luckily for me, months ago I decided not to make wine this year, as I could not figure out a way to keep me and my employees safe, working in such close quarters for week and weeks.
I still recall people having specious perceptions of smoke taint in 2008 wines (Anderson Valley Fires) from grapes hundred of miles away. It’s hard to remove a easy to believe but wrong idea from people’s heads once it gets lodged in there by the media.
Thank you so much for your article! Many in the media have classified 2020 has being another smoke taint 2017 vintage and that is far from the truth!! The media makes it sound as though all of Napa is on fire! The fire was East of Napa over the mountain range near Lake Hennessey. We live on the hillside in St Helena on the west and most days we had blue skies starting late in the morning but we could see the hazy smoke over the mountains in the far East. I wished the media would get their facts correct before they make such a blanket statement about Napa Valley. This Hennessey fire was nothing like the fire in 2017 where the smoke was so heavy over the Valley. The 2020 vintage will be another amazing vintage for Napa Valley!