Wineries suffer huge losses amid Napa chaos
Northern California’s wine industry has taken a number of glancing blows from wildfires in recent years. This week brought a direct hit.
The Glass Fire plowed through vast swaths of northern Napa Valley on Sunday and Monday, destroying structures at several winery properties — including Tofanelli Family Vineyard’s 120yearold barn and historic home in Calistoga and the stone winery of highend estate Chateau Boswell. At least 143 Napa County wineries were within evacuation zones, according to the county’s Office of Emergency Services; most owners are still waiting to survey how their vineyards fared.
Nobody resided in the Tofanelli home, said owner Vince
Tofanelli, but he feared many of the grapevines, planted in 1929, were destroyed. Late Sunday night, flames engulfed the winery at Chateau Boswell, which has been on the Silverado Trail for more than 40 years. “We are simply heartbroken,” owner Susan Boswell said via email.
Chronicle staff captured video of Fairwinds Estate Winery in which buildings appeared to have been completely leveled, but no representative of the winery could be reached for comment. Hunnicutt lost a house and all of its outdoor winemaking equipment. Hourglass lost its winery and historic guest house. The Glass Fire “significantly impacted” the Newton winery and vineyards, said general manager JeanBaptiste Rivail.
Castello di Amorosa, Calistoga’s famous castle winery, lost its farmhouse, said Vice President Jim Sullivan. Although the main castle remains intact, the farmhouse contained all of the company’s bottled wine, plus some fermentation tanks, the laboratory and offices.
“I could cry,” Sullivan said of the farmhouse, which was part of a more than $40 million construction project. “Everyone’s put so much hard work into that.”
By Monday evening, the Glass Fire grew to more than 36,000 acres and was still completely uncontained. Evacuation orders cleared out an expanse of northern Napa Valley, including the entire city of Calistoga and parts of St. Helena.
Normally brightgreen grape vines near Calistoga had been blackened and engulfed by a low, dark, orangegrey smoke Tuesday afternoon, which made the daylight end prematurely. The smoke hung low over row upon row of vines, giving the area an eerie vibe reminiscent of an apocalyptic fiction setting.
On the Silverado Trail, towering trees lining the entrance to the Chateau Boswell had been scorched, their skeletons now framing the chateau’s main building, which lay in ruin. Several hallowed trees were on fire behind it.
It was a nightmare scenario for a year that was already looking nightmarish for the Napa Valley wine industry. Napa weathered another large fire in August — the Hennessey Fire, which became part of the LNU Lightning Complex — and has been dealing with the repercussions of lingering wildfire smoke, which can ruin wine grapes. A number of vintners in Napa and Sonoma counties have even said that they won’t make any wine in 2020 due to smoke damage.
Now, some of those vintners were confronted with the possibility of not only losing their 2020 crop — but also their wineries, vineyards and homes. And with many of them evacuated, they were often not sure what exactly had happened to their properties.
Jeff Smith fled from both his home in St. Helena and his Calistoga winery, Hourglass. Late on Monday afternoon he learned that his home had survived, but much of Hourglass — including the main winery building, a guest house built in 1858 and an outdoor stage — was rubble.
“How do you replace the history?” Smith said. He was hopeful that the barrels of aging wine were safe inside the caves, but feared that the Douglas fir trees and olive trees, some of them 200 years old, had been killed.
On Monday, Ehren Jordan was in a similar situation, wondering what had happened to Failla Wines, the acclaimed winery he founded in 1998. He’d spent most of the day Sunday at the Calistoga winery preparing: moving all of his crush equipment from the outside areas into the underground caves and stashing the business’ most important files safely away.
Jordan noticed some fire engines up on the hill above his winery on Sunday afternoon. “I said, ‘Hey come with me, I have a 53,000gallon water tank and a generator that backs up the fire pump — use it! ’ ” Jordan said. Soon, his driveway became the staging area for six fire engines.
When he left early Sunday evening to return to his home in Sonoma County, “everything in the neighborhood was still standing,” Jordan said, “but it was super ominous looking.” By 7 p.m., he got word that his entire 4acre vineyard at the property had burned. A few hours later, he learned what had happened to Chateau Boswell, which is 900 feet away.
“You walk away and you say that’s it — if it burns, it burns,” Jordan said. “There’s nothing more I can do.” Just before 2 p.m. on Monday, a neighbor was able to reach Failla and confirm to Jordan that the winery had survived.
Susan Boswell, who has lived at her winery property for 25 years, was awoken at 4:30 a.m. Sunday by the sound of her dog barking. As soon as she got up, she could see the flames approaching; after calling Cal Fire, she grabbed her belongings and drove away. Later that night she saw the devastating images of the winery, which had been built from handquarried stone in 1979. “The stone facade of the building remains but it appears nothing else,” Boswell said. “All of my library wines were lost going back to 1979.” She still didn’t know the status of an 11,000squarefoot underground cave, in which all of her 2018 and 2019 wine, plus four vintages’ worth of sparkling wine, is aging.
The situation at Sterling Vineyards, one of Napa’s bestknown historic wineries, remained unclear. Chronicle photographer Brittany HoseaSmall captured images Monday morning that showed damage to some equipment outdoors, including large tanks, but the main winery building had been spared.
Firefighters were cutting away walls at a smaller building onsite that appeared to be smoldering from inside.
Hunnicutt Winery owner Justin Stephens returned to his property on Monday to find the main winery intact, but a house on the property that is used for offices and all of the winemaking equipment on the outdoor crushpad had burned. “There might be some salvageability to it,” Stephens said, but seeing part of the estate gone was crushing.
The team at Davis Estates evacuated from the Calistoga winery around 9:30 p.m. Sunday night after a 1,000gallon propane tank exploded on the property, said owner Mike Davis. The tank was about 100 yards away from the main winery building, but “everything surrounding the winery” was on fire, he said. His son described it as “looking like a blowtorch.”
Early Monday afternoon, Davis learned that the winery had survived. “I’m crying like a 2yearold,” he said.