Rescuing California’s Hellish 2020 Wine Vintage
Did Santa Barbara’s Smoke-Free Grapes Save the State? Or Did the State Save Us?
Santa Barbara County was one of the few wine grape-growing regions in the state that wasn’t burning during the harvest season. But this small wildfire did scorch vineyards just west of Buellton before harvest back in June. | Credit: Daniel Dreifuss
Even before wicked heat spikes and wildfires started ravaging the state and spreading the specter of smoke taint far and wide, California was preparing for a rough vintage of wine in 2020, particularly for growers in Santa Barbara County. Coming off of two bountiful and beautiful vintages in 2018 and 2019, facing an oversaturated market of producers large and small, and then smashed with the unprecedented uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic, farmers expected the price of grapes to be the lowest in recent memory, harking back to those pre-Sideways days.
And then much of California went up in flames, including many wine-growing regions. While Napa and Sonoma attracted most of the national attention, critical Central Coast appellations faced similar disasters.
Winemakers in the Santa Cruz Mountains beat back flames around their homes and wineries, only to lose entire crops to smoke and heat. In Monterey County, many vintners in the Santa Lucia Highlands were so surrounded by fires from Salinas and the Carmel Valley that they didn’t pick any red grapes, a stunning blow to one of the world’s top pinot noir regions. (White-wine grapes were less affected.) Smoke taint, which comes across on the nose and palate more like acerbic ashtray than toasty hickory in finished wines, is also affecting a tiny fraction of grapes in Paso Robles and the Edna Valley in San Luis Obispo County.
