Feature

Recovery from wildfires an ongoing process

By Sam Jones

October 2017 and the fall of 2020 may now seem like a smoky memory, but for those who lost their wineries, tasting rooms and vineyards, the recovery and rebuilding process is ongoing.

Some are starting from square one, while others are focused on increasing their property’s resilience against wildfire by building defensible space and using fireproof materials.

One such winery that is deep in the recovery process is the Signorello Estate, located off Silverado Trail in Napa. After the 2017 Atlas Peak Fire ravaged Ray Signorello’s family winery, he decided he wouldn’t just rebuild – he was going to reimagine the whole operation. Now, nearly five years later, Signorello’s vision is finally nearing, with construction fully underway at the estate.

“It’s been kind of a rough ride lately,” he said. “But, I guess the good news is that we lost the winery in 2017 and almost immediately embarked on a rebuild project. We went through the permit process, which took some time, and now we’re in the building phase and we’re hoping to have it wrapped up next summer.”

Signorello said the permitting process took much longer than initially anticipated, and COVID naturally slowed things down, but as of now, everything is on-track and going as planned. The build includes a reimagined winery, caves and hospitality center, and the layout is completely different from its previous iteration, so he is excited to see how this boosts functionality for everyday tasks as a winemaker.

In working with a team of architects to come up with the new design, Signorello was able to build back better by using fire-resistant materials like concrete and steel, designing the structures into the hill, and increasing the underground square footage, while also modernizing its aesthetic and internal workings.

“We’ve been making wine for a long time – 37 vintages – and we had a facility that was built in the 80s,” he said. “There’s a lot of things that have changed since then, and there are a lot of things we’ve learned, so we’re excited to incorporate all of our know-how in this new build and have something that will really perform well for us in all areas, from production and operationally, to storage and the caves and the hospitality piece to it.”

Similarly, Signorello also has been installing some mitigating measures if fire were ever to come close again. They have installed more water storage on the property, as well as fire pumps and perimeter extinguisher systems.

“We’re going the extra mile,” said Signorello. “So, we feel pretty good about resisting it if we had something similar to fire in the last go around.”

Upvalley in Deer Park, Viader Vineyards and Winery was also ripped up by fire, with the 2017 fire coming close, but the 2020 the LNU Lightning Complex Fires causing real damage. Vines were lost, as well as the on-property home, so now Alan Viader is doing the prep and clean-up work necessary to move forward and get back to primarily making wine.

“I’ve done phase one, removing the widowmakers and the trees that are already dead and precariously hanging in areas where my mom and I walk around, [and] she’s now replanting with olive trees and cypress trying to reimagine the area,” said Viader. “I had a whole carbon farm plan done, our annual farming was taking like 65 cars off the road every year, and I was good with that as my starting point.”

“But then, fire came in and took out all my trees – everything that I had planted and established.”

As a result, Viader has been reevaluating and prioritizing the projects that have the largest climate and environmental impacts, and also took a more drastic approach to protecting his family, property and community. In 2021, Viader became a volunteer firefighter.

Trained through the county’s volunteer firefighter academy, Viader now splits his time between his winery duties and responding to public safety calls from community members. Sometimes that means assisting with medical concerns, and sometimes it means helping with community projects. Regardless, Viader is happy to do whatever he can to lend a hand … or hose.

“The training was intense,” he said. “It’s a lot of gear, you have to be in really good shape, and I thought I was in decent shape … I was not.”

“[But] it’s all a matter of just repetitive and doing it and getting muscle memory. You do a lot more than just fighting fires.”

So even though he isn’t off blasting fires on a daily basis, he is ready to step up at the drop of the hat whenever someone needs help within his jurisdiction.

“It’s constantly going to do what you can, and it’s not required to go all over to all of the calls, but you don’t sign up unless you’re committed,” he said.

And at that, Viader’s pager buzzed, he glanced at its screen – “It’s a medical near here,” – and politely excused himself. Duty calls.

When Smoke Gets in Your Wine

By Benjamin Wallace

Deer Park was just leveled,” Alan Viader recalled. It was a morning in mid-February, and we were on the crest of the hill overlooking the main vineyard at Viader Winery, a 4,000-case direct-to-consumer producer founded by Viader’s mother, Delia, in Napa in the late 1980s.

Viader was talking about the Glass Fire, which had started before dawn on September 27, 2020. The fire originated near the winery and quickly made its way around the reservoir at its foot, then started burning up the hill, accelerated by dry grass on the vineyard floor and pushed along by the wind. Viader was at his home 15 miles south of the winery, and when he was finally able to get to the property the following night, fallen trees on the ground were still burning. Aboveground, a storage building had been incinerated, as had an irrigation building full of pumps, tanks, and pipes. The Glass Fire was not fully extinguished for 23 days. Afterward, Viader and his crew went vine by vine, cutting into each one to check its health and make sure the sap was flowing. Most of the Cabernet Franc vines survived because they were further from the flames, but the vines of Cabernet Sauvignon grapes, which anchor the Viaders’ wine, were decimated.

Considering that it was the worst wildfire ever to strike Napa and that his winery had been at the center of it, Viader had been, in many respects, lucky. A little over a month earlier, another blaze — the LNU Lightning Complex Fire — had begun to burn ten miles away from his vineyard, and Viader, anxious about the possibility of more flames, rushed to harvest the crop, pulling all-nighters to pick the grapes as soon as they were ripe. By the time the Glass Fire arrived, the bulk of his grapes was already fermenting in concrete tanks underground, unharmed. The Viaders had always kept their trees pruned and limbed and clear of buildings, and the barn survived, as did the all-concrete winery and stone tasting building. But one and a half years later, as we walked the property, there were still signs of damage: ember holes in a metal sign in front of the tasting room, trees standing but stripped of bark. In the vineyard, rows of trellis wires slashed down toward the reservoir. Here and there, a T-shaped vine hugged a trellis, but most were empty. At the end of some of the rows were bundles of dried vines that had recently been pruned, but they were nowhere near the volume that would be heaped there in a normal year.

Viader is still going back and forth with his insurance company over how much of his losses it will cover. Until 2020, vineyards themselves, being lush and irrigated and manicured, were considered firebreaks not requiring extensive coverage. Like a lot of other winemakers in his situation, Viader didn’t get his policy renewed. The best he can hope for is a much smaller umbrella courtesy of the state’s FAIR Plan program, which he says won’t insure more than $3 million.

After the Glass Fire, Viader began preparing for the next time. We passed a pile of what looked like industrial-strength Super Soakers: They were “water axes,” gas-powered, high-pressure pumps with fire-hose nozzles that can shoot a blast of flame-dousing water a hundred feet. At the winery’s front gate, he had posted a reflective sign listing the main features of the property (one residence, one winery, x number of tanks, the locations where fire engines could turn around) and other information for firefighters. In January, Viader enrolled in the local firefighting academy to become a volunteer, and today he wore a fire-dispatch scanner on his belt. The road we were walking on was going to be widened, he told me, to give fire trucks easier access. “Now that I’m driving one,” Viader said, “I know exactly what they need.”

However diligent Viader’s preparations for flames, there’s much less he can do to guard against smoke, which can come from anywhere, including the properties of less fire-savvy winemakers. Back in 2017, the Tubbs Fire steered clear of his vineyards, but two blocks of his Cabernet Sauvignon were still hit by smoke. Viader experimented with a few methods to mitigate the impact or mask it — trying various yeasts, fermentation temperatures, and oaks and adding tannins — and still ended up selling the wine in the bulk market that year.

When fires swept through Northern California in 2020, casting shifting palls of smoke for more than two months, other winemakers were forced to make agonizing decisions about whether to even bother producing their wines. Napa has the most expensive farmland in the U.S., and the surest way to profit is to make pricey bottles of Cabernet; once you’re selling a luxury product, though, even minor imperfections can be fatal. “Maybe at $20 you’re okay with a little smoke impact,” said Jacobson, who, at the time, was a winemaker at Joel Gott Wines, “but at the $200 price point, you’re not okay with any.” One consulting winemaker estimated to Wine Spectator that only 20 percent of the Napa 2020 crop would be bottled. Some wineries didn’t make any wine at all, while others made only a fraction of their usual output or sold it to mass producers instead of under their own labels. Some wineries improvised — Hangar 1 made a vodka called Smoke Point from tainted Napa grapes, and Boich Family Cellar turned its grapes into brandy — but California’s wine industry, by one estimate, suffered $3.7 billion in losses in 2020. Many vineyards and wineries that are the source of California’s fabled Cabs became uninsurable.

In the time-shifted reality of winemaking, for the next few years Viader has wine to sell. The 2018s are only just now being released. The 2019s are in the cellar, bottled and being labeled. Soon, the 2020 vintage will be bottled too. During the LNU Lightning Complex Fire that August, the high winds pushed most of the smoke away from Viader, but on the fourth day, his grapes were briefly exposed to it. “To be sure and extra careful,” Viader said, he sprayed the grapes coming out of the vineyard with ozone water. He also shortened the time the juice had contact with the skins and fermented the wine at lower temperatures, another technique for reducing extraction of smoke compounds from the skin into the juice. The wines, he said, came out great, but the 2020 vintage may be the last normal one for a while; it will take around four years for the replanted vines to grow back.

When he started talking about Cabernet losing its throne, Petroski said, “my nickname became Doomsday Dan.” Today, lots of Napa wineries are undertaking similar experiments. Viader told me that, after the Glass Fire, he started shifting his wines away from the Parker-favored powerhouse style and back toward the fresher, more acidic, lower-alcohol style his mother had made when she was first starting out; these wines can be made from grapes picked earlier, shortening their exposure to fire risk. And though he was less pessimistic about the future of Cabernet, Viader was setting aside 10 percent of the vineyard to experiment with varieties like Malbec, Grenache, Tempranillo, and Touriga Nacional — “all hardy varieties from arid areas of the world,” he said. “Kind of thinking ahead for the climate.” “It’s recognized now as an existential threat,” Petroski said. His peers, he has noticed, are “weaning themselves off Cab or looking at What are the future options?”

Napa Valley Grapegrowers Report: Preparing the community for wildfires

By Caroline Keller & Alan Viader

It’s no surprise that the notion of preparedness and designing defensible spaces has made its way into the mainstream vernacular for all members of our community. Since 2017, 60% of the landcover in Napa County has been touched by fire. Across California, over 4.3 million acres of land burned in 2020 alone.

Wildfires may have become the new normal in California, but as a community we can work together to be more resilient and better prepared. To this end, creating fire-ready vineyards and landscapes is essential.

In the aftermath of the 2020 Glass Fire, which burned large swaths of the Viader family’s Howell Mountain estate vineyard, as well as 30,000 surrounding trees, proprietor Delia Viader and her son, grape grower and winemaker, Alan Viader, are rebuilding their estate property through a new lens.

They are preparing for the next fire threat by creating a defensible space that protects their vines and structures and, in circumstances as serious as the Glass Fire, gives firefighters a chance to fend off impending flames safely. And they want to help their wine country neighbors to do the same.

On April 28, the Napa Valley Grapegrowers, in partnership with the Napa Valley Vintners and Napa Community Firewise Foundation, are hosting a Fire Resources Fair to allow members of the industry and community to learn about fire preparedness.

The fair will be held outdoors at the Napa Valley College Upper Valley Campus, where attendees can interact with organizations and businesses looking to support the community in fire recovery and prevention. This event is free. To attend, register on the Grape Growers website, napagrowers.org.

A winemaker becomes a firefighter

In addition to his role as winemaker at Viader, Alan Viader also moonlights as a member of the Napa County Sheriff’s volunteer search and rescue team, as well as the Deer Park volunteer fire department. He graduated from the CalFire fire academy in 2021.

“When the Glass fire in 2020 hit, it hit my mom’s home and our family property, and I felt helpless because I couldn’t do anything. I was turned away at the roadblocks,” Viader said. “I was communicating with my friend on the Deer Park fire department all night, sharing gate codes and mapping property access points to help them cut hand lines.

“I wanted to be there, and I couldn’t. I wasn’t trained and that frustrated me. I told myself that I would never be in that helpless position again, so I joined the CalFire volunteer academy, and now after training, I can help my community, and family, with whatever arises.”

For this month’s Napa Valley Grapegrowers’ report, Viader provided advice on how the community can prepare for wildfire.

Know your area

“We call it Situation Awareness in the fire service, but it applies to everybody.” Viader said. “Know the risks in your immediate area, know your best escape routes, and be aware of what is happening around you at all times. If you’re not already signed up for Nixle, do it. There are apps and Facebook pages that you can join and stay up to date as well.

“A great app that I like to use is Watch Duty to alert me of any fires in the valley,” Viader said. “Invest in a HAM radio, get licensed and learn how to use it. They are so valuable during an emergency and sometimes the only way to listen in and know what’s going on. In 2017, when the cell phone towers went down in the fires, that is all I had to listen in and communicate.”

Be ready to go in an emergency
“Have your car always filled with plenty of gas.,” Viader said. “I’m never below a half tank. Never.

“Don’t be that person that risks the lives of the first responders because they now need to rescue you when you had the chance to evacuate early. Have the important things ready to go and know when to leave. When a fire is already burning down onto your property, it is too late. I’ve seen homes burn in a matter of minutes. It’s faster than you expect and not a good situation to find yourself in. Play out the evacuation route in your head. If there is no power, do you know how to open the garage door? Your gate? Work through the details ahead of time when you’re calm and have time to arrange plans.

Defensible space

“This is so important,” Viader said. “It’s not going to work if only nine out of 10 people on the block do it. That one person is going to risk the life and safety of the entire neighborhood. Clean up your property, remove piles of junk and debris. Limb your trees and thin out the canopies.

“Spacing between trees is also important,” he added. Most forests are too dense and its unhealthy, so open things up and allow the trees to thrive. If you have dense forests around your home, create a shaded fuel-break. You should have at least 100 feet of clean and tidy area around every structure; 150-feet if you have slopes.

“As you move closer to the structure itself, have things even cleaner and more open. Look around and get rid of the oily, flammable plants around your garden. That 5–10-foot area around the structure is critical. Take away that old rosemary bush that you planted 20 years ago that’s growing right up against your front door. If you don’t have the fuel, the fire won’t find its way to your front door.

“Another term we use in the fire service are ‘ladder fuels.” Ladder fuels refer to brush and untrimmed trees that are low to the ground, allowing fire to work its way up through the brush, into the low-hanging branches, then up the ladder into the trees, which then spreads from tree to tree, or something called a ‘crown fire.’

Viader added, “Defensible space is not only to protect your own property though, but it also helps give the first responders arriving on your property some extra time to assess your property and develop a plan on how they are going to defend it.

“Another key thing to remember, is that wildfires don’t always start from another property. Sometimes a structure fire that started in the kitchen can spread to the surrounding landscapes and take out the entire neighborhood. So, it’s helpful in those situations as well to have adequate defensible space.

“Tip: choose fire-resistant landscaping. I use a lot of natural stone and gravel for our landscaping. It’s safe, looks more natural and doesn’t require irrigation. And rocks that I pulled out of the vineyard are free. This type of hardscape proved itself to us by saving my mom’s home, and our winery.”

Provide easy access to your property

“Starting with your address number, make sure its large and reflective,” Viader said. “If first responders can’t find your address, they waste precious time. Make access easy and clear. Remember, most emergencies happen at night and in less-than-ideal situations. Make things as obvious and clear as possible.

Viader also suggested, “Invite the local fire station to your property so they can get familiar with your property. Have them point out anything that is of concern to them and their safety. If you have a large, complex property with multiple driveways and residences, have a map with available water resources and any access roads and gates. The more information they know about your property the better. Do they have room to turn around on your property? If I’m driving a fire engine and I don’t know whether there is a turnaround point down that long narrow driveway, I’ll think twice about going down there.

Water connections are also important

Viader said, “If you do have water tanks or swimming pool water, make sure the connections are something a fire engine can connect to. All fire engines in the valley can connect to a 2.5-inch hook-up. But it’s a specific fire department hose thread and size, so don’t expect your system to automatically come setup that way. You’ll need to have those 2.5-inch connection points added or provide adaptors for quick and easy access.

He added, “It’s important we work together to protect the Napa Valley for our future generations. With healthy, maintained forests, firefighters have a better and safer chance to fight wildfire, and the forest has a better chance to survive. To change fire behavior, we need to change the fuels. Defensible space is not just a suggestion, it’s the smart thing to do when you live among the forest.”

The Differences Between Mountain and Valley Wines, Explained

“Napa Valley is a wine region with incredible diversity,” says Rebekah Wineburg, viticulturist and winemaker for Quintessa, in Napa’s Rutherford American Viticultural Area (AVA). “Looking at differences between mountain and valley AVAs is a good start to understanding that diversity.”

Elevation is the most obvious influence on wines made from grapes grown in these areas. It also impacts factors like fog, topography, soil type and diurnal range, or difference in day and night temperatures.

The most obvious ways mountain wines announce themselves in the glass is by mouthfeel and tannin texture, Wineburg says.

“As a gross generalization, mountain tannins are tighter, stronger, with a lot of length and need more time in barrel and bottle to develop,” she says. “Valley floor tannins are plush, dense, but without the length.”

For Alan Viader, the distinction between mountain and valley wines comes down to concentration of aroma and flavor. He’s the director of operations and winemaking at Viader Vineyards & Winery, located at the foothills of Napa’s Howell Mountain. Vines grow on a steep 32% incline from 480 to 1,200 feet above sea level in soils low in nutrients and moisture.

As a result, these vines need to dig deep to find water. Their berries ripen slower, which produces smaller, more concentrated grapes that create intense aromas and flavors.

High altitudes can also have moderate temperatures, though conditions tend to get cooler with elevation. In Napa, vines above the fog line with more regular sun exposure can experience less range in temperature between day and night.

“We don’t get the extreme highs or lows you would experience on the valley floor,” says Viader.

These conditions affect the grapes and wine in different ways.

“Moderate temperatures…help stretch the growing season and allow fruit to ripen at a slow, steady pace,” says Laura Deyermond, viticulturist at Newton Vineyard, which has estate vineyards in Spring Mountain and Mount Veeder AVAs.

Slower skin development and sugar accumulation in mountainous AVAs produce grapes with “classic berry aromas,” says Deyermond, often along with deeper color and firmer tannic structure. All can help develop ageability.

While hillside soils are predominantly rocky, “soils across the valley floor are actually quite variable,” says John Ruel, CEO of Trefethen Family Vineyards in Napa’s Oak Knoll AVA.

“Vines planted on vigorous soils need more canopy management to dial back the vigor,” he says.

Trefethen’s piece of Napa Valley floor has a mixture of soils, which Ruel says helps promote diversity in his wine program.

“Areas with high gravel content are well-drained, thus suited to Cabernet Sauvignon in particular,” he says. “Areas with richer soil are better suited to varieties like Merlot and Chardonnay.”

Where Trefethen’s topography is predominantly flat, Quintessa has rolling landscapes that provide “both mountain and valley characteristics,” says Wineburg. “The eastern hills with white-ash soils produce wines with floral character, red fruit and a distinctive length and fine-chalk texture to the tannins. The central and western hills with mixed volcanic and sandy soils produce wines with deep red and black fruit and concentrated, supple tannins.”

In the end, quality grapes and world-class wines come down to good viticultural practices and vine balance, which can mean different things due to environmental influences.

“Great wine can be made in the hills and on the valley floor,” says Ruel. “As long as the grower understands the site and the science.”

This month, Alan Viader, director of operations and winemaking at Viader Vineyards & Winery in Napa Valley, took a significant step in his career. He didn’t obtain a PhD or earn the coveted title Master of Wine. In a haunting sign of the times, Viader graduated from CalFire’s rigorous six-month fire academy, equipped and certified for a 2021 fire season that has already started.

Now, he says, he knows what to look for and how to protect his Howell Mountain property, which was damaged in the 2020 Glass Fire.

“I’ll never forget it. It was like a hurricane but with embers instead of rain,” Viader recalls.

He isn’t alone. Following the wildfires that have ravaged wine country every year since, wine professionals in Napa and Sonoma are learning how to prevent and fight fires by acquiring not only training, but their own equipment, including fire trucks. They’ve even tried to rent single-engine, water-scooping Fire Boss planes to snuff a blaze as soon as it starts.

The estimated damage to California’s wine business from the 2020 fires alone is expected to reach $3.7 billion, according to market research firm bw166 — and that only accounts for the loss of vines and potential wine sales.

In response, the Sonoma County Winegrowers and Sonoma County Farm Bureau offered a five-hour course on fire safety training to its land stewards in 2020. Last month, the Napa County Board of Supervisors held a day-long wildfire summit with 50 vintners in attendance to address everything from prevention plans and fire hazard abatement to software alert systems for evacuations.

“I’ve never seen our members so focused on a single topic,” says Rex Stults of Napa Valley Vintners. The big win, he says, was the board’s adoption of a multi-year Community Wildfire Protection Plan (CWPP) put forth by the Napa Communities Firewise Foundation, with $6.4 million in funding approved so far.

A primary focus of the CWPP efforts is fuel reduction, something vintners and growers across these valleys are also prioritizing. Most years, Jim Regusci, who owns Napa’s Regusci Winery, brings in sheep to graze through the 170 vineyard acres on his Stags Leap ranch, removing underbrush and other vegetation that can allow fires to burn hotter and faster. This year, he added goats.

“Sheeps graze low, but goats can go vertical,” says Regusci, explaining that the animals can stand on their hind legs, enabling them to reach leaves and other shrubbery. “And we’re doing it on the entire ranch, all 260 acres.”

When the Atlas Peak fire hit Napa in 2017, it was an eye-opener, Regusci says. Since then, he has added 210,000 gallons of water storage and purchased two fire department-style bulldozers. He already owned a fire truck, but has another on the way. He’s ready.

“CalFire does a great job, but their protocol is saving lives, so you have to be self-sufficient,” Regusci says, adding that he did not have fire support for the first 50 hours of the Atlas Peak fire.

After the fire ripped through his property, which he managed to protect with his crew and equipment, the winery crew headed north, saving four more Silverado Trail wineries, including Darioush and James Cole. If he had had that second fire truck, he thinks he could have saved Signorello, which burned to the ground.

“We now have the equipment and know how to run it,” Regusci says.

So does Rene Byck, co-owner of Santa Rosa’s Paradise Ridge Winery, which was reduced to rubble in the 2017 Tubbs Fire. It took two years to rebuild the winery, which reopened at the end of 2019 with a new tile-and-stucco roof instead of the previous wood. Byck also installed a generator and a fire hydrant. His entire staff has received fire emergency training. And instead of bringing in sheep seasonally, he is looking at buying his own livestock and building barns to house them.

“I’m not worried about a fire burning our place again,” he says. “I’m worried about our community continuously getting hit by fires. And I feel bad for my kids. This is the norm for them now.”

In April, along with Napa winemakers Warren Winiarski and Randy Dunn, environmental advocate Mike Hackett and other members of the Growers/Vintners for Responsible Agriculture took matters into their own hands by offering to pay $1.5 million to lease two initial-response air tankers that could each, at a moment’s notice, scoop 800 gallons of water from Lake Berryessa to put out a fire in the county.

CalFire, which contracts with the county to operate the Napa County Fire Department, refused the offer, saying that the Fire Boss planes could slow and complicate their FireHawk helicopter response. That helicopter will be stationed in Napa Valley this season and can carry up to 1,000 gallons of water, but it can be dispatched anywhere in the state.

“Airplanes don’t put out fires but they keep them at bay until people and equipment get there, and from what we’ve seen, that can take time,” says Hackett, president of the GVRA. “I refuse to give up on this.”

Viader, who recently joined the Deer Park volunteer fire department, has been preparing his property more aggressively since the “wake-up call” of 2017. That’s the year he helped evacuate residents as part of the Napa County Sheriff’s volunteer search and rescue team. Last August, when the LNU Lightning Complex fires hit, Viader was on estate and sprang into action, spraying everything with water and, with his crew, creating defensible space by thinning trees and other vegetation on the estate.

He wasn’t as fortunate two months later, when the Glass Fire came raging at three in the morning.

“The fire ripped through our property, and roughly 75 percent of the vineyards were damaged,” he says.

Fire prevention is now a year-round effort, Viader says, and it has changed the way he sees his estate. He uses rocks and gravel as landscaping around structures now, and opens tree canopies to allow access for fire trucks. He has placed easy-to-spot blue reflectors at every water “draft” or hydrant location — there are nearly 500,000 gallons of water stored in tanks throughout the property — and made sure each hookup had a 2.5-inch fire hose connection. That’s the standard connection every fire engine carries.

“I know what to look for now,” he says. “I think everyone should be doing what they can to prepare their properties. It is part of living in nature.”