Wine Country Fires Hit Northern California Pot Industry Hard
The wildfires raging through Northern Californias Wine Country these past weeks have killed at least 41 people, left dozens missing, and thousands burned out of their homes. They have also put a significant hurt on the regions namesake wine industry, and its up-and-coming country cousin, the weed business.
As of this week, more than 5,000 structures had gone up in flames, including whole neighborhoods in Santa Rosa, a city of 175,000 about an hour north of San Francisco. Tens of thousands of people endured mandatory evacuations as smoke turned skies grey as far south as San Jose.
Vineyards and wineries along the Silverado Trail in Napa County and the Highway 12 corridor between Santa Rosa and Sonoma in Sonoma County have been destroyed or damaged. Wine Country towns like Kenwood and Glen Ellen have been hard hit.
Major tourist hotels like the Hilton Sonoma Wine Country and the Fountaingrove Inn in Santa Rosa have burned. At least one Silverado Trail winery, Signorello Estates, appears to have been destroyed, while damage reports are pending on others. Similarly, Sonoma County wineries including Chateau St. Jean, Kenwood, Kunde and B.R. Cohn, were endangered Tuesday.
It looks like a bombing run, winemaker Joe Nielsen toldthe San Francisco Chronicle as he viewed what was left of Donelan Family Wines. Just chimneys and burnt out cars and cooked trees.&rdquo
The Wine Country devastation will have an impact not only on tourism, but also on the price of some fine reds. While 75% of the regions grapes have already been picked, premium merlot and cabernet sauvignon crops are mostly still on the vines. The number of wineries burned or threatened could cause shortages of these prized grapes for years, since California produces about 85% of American wine, and Napa and Sonoma counties produce the bulk of its premium wines.
The same temperature Mediterranean climate that makes the area so suitable for grape growing makes it ideal for pot farming, too, and Sonoma Countys estimated 3,000 to 9,000 marijuana growers have been hard-hit, as well. While damage reports for the wine industry will take a while, pot people are already reporting losses in the tens of millions of dollars.
The marijuana harvest begins a bit later than the grape harvest, and when the fires reared up, thousands and thousands of outdoor marijuana plants were still in the ground. Now, some of those fields are little more than ash, including in neighboring Mendocino County, where the Redwood Valley fire is burning up pot crops, too.
This is shaping up to be the worst year on record for Californias growers, California Growers Association head Hezekiah Allen told SFGate last week, adding that at least two dozen members had lost their entire farms.
This is going to leave a deep scar, he said. I had one conversation today where the family was in tears, saying, We dont know how were going to make it to January, let alone next planting season.
Sonoma County Growers Alliance chair Tawnie Logan reported significant losses among her membership
We have a lot of people who have lost their farms in the last 36 hours, and ...
