OUT OF THE ASHES
HEAT SPIKES AND RAGING WILDFIRES SHOULD HAVE DECIMATED THE NAPA AND SONOMA 2017 VINTAGE, BUT AFTER TASTING SOME 1,000 WINES, JAMES SUCKLING DISCOVERED SOME GREAT BOTTLES
The summer of 2017 in Northern California will be remembered as one of tragedy, drama and, in some cases, ultimately of success, as winemakers overcame the odds to produce great wines. For three days over the Labor Day weekend, temperatures exceeded 40 degrees Celsius and in some areas they reached as high as 43, sending some vines into cardiac arrest. This exaggerated dryness and heat set up the conditions for the fires that came in October. Some top winemakers couldn’t get their crops picked before the fires began and had to leave the grapes on the ground with smoke in the air. Screaming Eagle, the legend of Napa, had only just begun the harvest when the fire began on the night of October 8. Yet it still made two of the best wines of the vintage – but only the equivalent of a few hundred cases, with the rest declassified.
“It was on track to be a really pretty vintage,” said Nick Gislason, winemaker at Screaming Eagle. “The Merlot was all in and we were just starting on Cabernet Sauvignon. Monday was going to be a big pick day and then it changed with the fire.”
I was in Napa during a large part of the fire and it was dreadful. It was incredibly smoky and breathing was difficult. Besides the poor air quality, there were power cuts. Some winemakers were locked out of their wineries, while others snuck in to make the wines already in the tanks or vats.
It really was only by the grace of God, combined with incredibly talented winemakers, that some beautiful wines were produced in 2017. I honestly had much lower expectations for the 2017 vintage in Northern California and especially Napa and Sonoma but so many of the wines are gorgeous.
“It’s a challenging vintage because of the psychology of it, as well as what happened, but we made some excellent wines in 2017,” said veteran winemaker Paul Hobbs. “We hope people taste and drink them.”