In addition, Williams said, grape vari- eties respond to smoke differently—and the threshold can be low. “We’re talking about parts per billion,” she said. “It can be one sugar cube in an Olympic-sized pool or 1 second over 32 years, the threshold at which an entire vintage can be ruined or not.” Since 2017, Williams said, the Napa Valley has had “some level of smoke and fire” during every harvest. “We have been the point of the spear when it comes to responding to se- vere fire and smoke events,” she said. “We’re coming to terms with the fact that wildfires are a natural part of our ecological landscape.” Williams said it is important to recog- nize the role of climate change, stating her belief that no amount of forest man- agement could have overcome “12,000 lightning strikes spontaneously, causing all these fires across California.” “We doneed to do forestmanagement, preventing severe wildfires and mitigat- ing losses,” she said. “But we have to talk about climate change at the same time.” A single fire in theNapa region resulted in $2 billion in losses to the wine busi- ness, Williams said, adding that crop in- surance rarely covers full market price and there is no property insurance for Challenges Continued from Page 7
counter a smoke-tainted wine, because no vintners would risk the damage to their reputation by marketing it. “That’s why some took a loss this year,” Williams said. She said there was only one labora- tory in the region that could determine if grapes had been damaged by smoke; as a result, many farmers had to wait 30 to 60 days, and had to decide whether to proceed with harvest without knowing the viability of their fruit. Some wineries chose to back out of contracts because of concerns that grapes were damaged, she said. Williams said she would like to see re- search on whether there are ways to re- move smoke taste during the wine-mak- ingprocess. She said therehas been some discussion about how to push harvest dates earlier, by pruning differently and taking other actions. The fact some wineries either did not produce wines or cut back on produc- tion, along with a dry season this year, could lead to a production gap that will boost demand, Williams said. A full account of Smith’s “crushing crush report” may be read at asmith. ucdavis.edu/news/crushing-grape-report. (Denni s Pol lock i s a repor t er in F r e s no . He ma y b e c on t a c t e d a t agcompollock@yahoo.com.)
As wines age, any impact of smoke on grapes may become more apparent. In some cases, it may be three years before vintners know whether wines may be affected.
vineyards without houses on them. Napa County produces a specialized, high-value crop, offers comparatively higher wages and draws employees from other regions, Williams said—but the cost of living and housing is high. She said vineyardworkers lost an aver- age of $5,500 per person during harvest last year, and that lost wages could total $50 million. Williams said a task force is working on better ways to identify smoke impacts to wine, provide model contracts relat-
ed to smoke exposure, better insurance policies and disaster relief resources, best-practices programs for fire preven- tion and land management strategies in and around vineyards, and a wage loss assistance programfor vineyard employ- ees, in partnership with the Napa Valley Community Foundation. It takes about three years for grapes to find their way into bottles for sale, she said, “so we won’t really have the full picture of how much wine was lost for a while.” But she said it’s unlikely any consumer of Napa Valleywinewould en-
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8 Ag Alert May 12, 2021
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