![]() ![]() “It had gone a couple days without punch-downs and temperature control.” “We started out by going through the ferments,” Lee said. On Tuesday, parent company Jackson Family Wines provided a generator. Adam Lee of Siduri says his winery in Santa Rosa survived, but it didn’t have power. Power outages are also creating issues for the wines fermenting in tanks. ![]() “We are running on minimal crews right now,” said Philippe Melka, who consults for more than a dozen labels and produces his own wines. Pickers and winery staff have had to evacuate, and some have lost their homes. Those who have been able to pick their grapes are facing other challenges. “If there is an impact it may be that the buds have burned off and there may be an impact on the yields next year.” “We really think the impact on the vines will be minimal,” she said. Anita Oberholster, cooperative extension specialist in enology at the University of California at Davis, agrees that many of the vines should be fine since they are hard to burn and the strong winds actually helped to blow the fires through the vineyards very quickly. She believes the vines' green foliage and the mowed cover crops in the vineyards helped slow or halt the flames-green vegetation is harder to burn than the fires’ typical fuel, the dry scrub on the ground in the hillside forests of oak and pine.ĭr. “During the movement of these fires, the vineyards have actually served as a fire break in many instances and saved nearby homes and structures,” said Cohen. There is a good chance the vines survived, even if their grapes have not. Now they are scrambling to pick the last of their grapes and ferment the wines while coping with evacuations, power losses, road closures and thick clouds of smoke. But vintners report that there is still some Cabernet Sauvignon and other late-ripening grapes hanging on the vines. “The grapes were acclimated to heat early in the season this year, had developed thick skins, and we were able to harvest most of our crop at relatively low Brix despite the heat.” “The 2017 vintage has been a hot and dry one, but we are very pleased with the quality of the wines in tank right now,” said Remi Cohen of Lede Family Wines in Stags Leap District, a Napa appellation in the Atlas fire zone. The Napa Valley Vintners reported the same figure, while the Mendocino WineGrowers estimates that most of the white grapes and 75 percent of the region’s red grapes were in. Karissa Kruse, president of the Sonoma County Winegrowers, estimates that 90 percent of the region’s winegrapes had been picked. With fire crews still battling the flames, and many areas under mandatory evacuation, winemakers are facing challenges as they try to finish what had once looked to be a relatively easy harvest.īy the time the fires arrived, vintners had harvested the majority of their grapes. Northern California’s harvest was already winding down when the wildfires tore through parts of Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino Counties, forcing winemakers and residents to flee. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |