California Fires
In town for the annual Premiere Napa Valley Auction, GERRIE LIM finds out how last October’s deadly wildfires have impacted the region’s winemakers
VISIONS OF IMPENDING doom can be conjured up by photographs and there’s something about this one that spells imminent disaster. Behind lines of vines trellised in sequential harmony, with grapes for picking to be harvested into wine, a hill is on fire and thick smoke billows into the sky.
This actually happened in October 2017 in Napa Valley, a day before Presidents’ Day, at the Cliff Lede Vineyards. “Most of our wines had just been harvested days before — we lost only an-acreand-half of Cabernet Sauvignon,” says Remi Cohen, the company’s vice-president and general manager. The fires that took the valley, along with its neighbours (in Sonoma, Mendocino, Lake and Solano counties), were thankfully not widespread this time with only 70,000 — or 15 percent — of its 504,000 acres razed.
Of Napa’s 45,000 acres of planted vineyards, only 3,500 or less than 8 percent were within the fire zone. Just 126 of those acres have been declared a loss, though this number will grow with time as vineyard owners continue to assess the damage. Of the 800 wineries, 20 were affected, while 700 homes (out of 55,500 housing units) were heavily damaged or destroyed. Seven people lost their lives.
Signorello and Vinroc, for example, were heavily impacted. Ray Signorello Jr, who has led the charge set by his father since 1977, tells the story of that fateful day in October with a shrug and a smile, while Vinroc’s proprietors try not to think about all they’ve lost on their slopes off Atlas Peak Road. The key is what to do when faced with such a threat, when your whole
life looks as if it’s about to come crumbling down.
“I was in Vancouver at the time but my wife was at the winery,” Signorello recalls. “The phone rang and my wife said there’s a huge fire coming towards us. I was halfasleep, thinking, ‘ Well, you know, we’ve had fires before, and maybe she’s over-exaggerating.’”
Nonetheless, he called his vineyard manager, Pierre Birebent, who lives in the valley in St Helena. “’There’s a large fire on the ridge behind us,’ I said to Pierre. He said, OK, he’d go check it out. I could tell from his voice that he thought it wasn’t a big deal either.”
But with 10-percent humidity and 50-miles-per-hour winds fanning the flames, it wasn’t long before Birebent had an update for him. “He called me and he went, ‘Yeah, this is a pretty big fire, we’re going to get our hoses out and hose down the area.’ And I was like, OK, it’s [still] on the next property. But then he called me back again and said it was now on our property.”
“Fortunately, my wife took what we needed from the property, and I got on the police scanner and began listening to what a big deal it was,” he continues. “It was massive, some people had died, and it wasn’t just here but multiple fires everywhere!”
Luckily, the 2017 vintage was already picked. “The wines were harvested. It was an early harvest, and they were on the crush pad and in the tanks.” Signorello’s total output comes from 42 acres and is small — 6,000 cases at best, among them some of the finest wines in Napa. His flagship Padrone Cabernet Sauvignon is highly rated.
Signorello’s 2015 vintage of red wines and the 2016 vintage of white wines were also safely stored off-site, and the 2016 vintage in barrel was secure. But while the family didn’t lose their wines and vines, and nobody was hurt, they did lose their residence, hospitality centre, offices and laboratory.
It’s a slightly different story up Atlas Peak Road at Vinroc Wine Caves, where husband and wife Michael Parmenter and Kiky Lee are having me taste their wine for the Premiere Napa Valley auction — a 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon called Red Lava in reference to their vineyard’s rocky volcanic soil. Fermented and aged as a separate barrel lot before blending, only 60 bottles have been made. Known for its vineyard and iconic wine cave carved into the rocky east slope of Napa Valley at 1,800 feet of elevation, Vinroc’s main house, guest house, equipment sheds and barn were completely destroyed in the fire.
“It was 9 o’clock at night. The electricity went out, the phones went out, and Kiky saw it first — this glow from a mile away that was the early stages of the fire. We left to go downhill to get cell service, because where we are we don’t get good cellular service, but we couldn’t get back up to the winery. For 10 days, they wouldn’t let us go back up! We were stuck. We had to stay in a hotel,” Parmenter shares.
Unlike Signorello, Vinroc hadn’t harvested its vines before the fire broke. The surviving crop is so lean Lee describes it as a harvest “[just large] enough for us to drink”.
“Everybody’s asking me, ‘Are you going to rebuild your house?’” says Parmenter. “That’s our priority right now. That, and getting the vineyards going — there was damage to the irrigation system and the fencing. The type of questions I ask myself now are like, ‘What kind of tractor am I going to buy?’”
Further north and just off the Silverado Trail on Yountville Cross Road in the Stags Leap District, Cliff Lede’s Cohen recalls: “The fires were moving quite rapidly that Monday. The smoke and the flames had engulfed the area and it seemed like our [flagship] Poetry vineyards had been damaged. But the smoke cleared and we were very lucky thanks to the people who had irrigated the property the night before. The fire trucks came right at the critical moment, too.” A separate parcel and barn were less fortunate.
Cliff Lede’s vineyard blocks are named for its eponymous owner’s
love of classic rock songs. For instance, the Cabernet Sauvignon 2016 Diamond Fire wine, which was auctioned this year, is a masterful blend of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” and “Light My Fire” rock blocks.
In the days following the blaze, Cohen and winemaker Chris Tynan allowed neighbours to cut through the property to check on their own estates — trespassing, but done in the community spirit of helping one another.
Brad Groper, vice-president of sales at Long Meadow Ranch, echoes the sentiment of those more fortunate. Chris Hall, his boss, has a winery in the Mayacamas Mountains and a restaurant Farmstead in St Helena. He is also a volunteer fireman with the Rutherford Fire Department. “We were in Japan, and Chris flew home first to prepare things,” Groper says, “like getting the power going in the restaurant. Not so much for business but so locals and firefighters had a place to eat. Chris literally was on a bulldozer one morning at 3 am. and ploughed the shrubbery and plants, [making] a dirt road so for the next 10 days some 250 firefighters could come in.”
At the end of the day, though, what were the lessons learnt? “I lost my mother and my father in 1995 and 1998,” says Signorello. “After you’ve lost your parents, everything else is easy. This is my chance to turn it into something positive. Nobody got hurt, just [some] vines and buildings. This winery will continue even when I’m dead.”
The family bought their property 41 years ago and it’s not lost on Signorello that he’s now 54, the same age as his mother when she passed away.
“Weird things happen,” he continues. “I lost 15,000 cases 12 years ago in the Mare Island Wines Central Warehouse fire in Vallejo — the largest loss of wine in one place in history. A quarter-billion dollars, and 88 wineries had wine there. Then, I lost my wine but still had my facilities. This time, I lost my buildings but still have my wine!”
Chris Tynan, the winemaker at Cliff Lede, who didn’t evacuate, says he’d have done it with greater foresight. “I’d take my passport, my guitar and a case of my 12 best bottles — including a 1974 Heitz Cellar Martha’s Vineyard, a Henri Bonneau Chateauneuf du Pape, old Mayacamas from 1974, 1977 and 1978, and some Colgin, because I used to work there. I have priorities, you know.”
The firmest perspective, however, comes from someone who lost much more. “I’m very Zen,” Vinroc’s Kiky Lee, a Taiwanese who came to California at age 22, affirms. “The Chinese say, ’The stronger the fire, the greater the prosperity.’ And I can tell you it’s true!”