But drive off the main road, and the vineyards that made this valley famous \u2014 where the mix of soil, temperature patterns and rainfall used to be just right \u2014 are now surrounded by burned-out landscapes, dwindling water supplies and increasingly nervous winemakers, bracing for things to get worse.<\/p>\n
Desperation has pushed some growers to spray sunscreen on grapes, to try to prevent roasting, while others are irrigating with treated wastewater from toilets and sinks because reservoirs are dry.<\/p>\n
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Their fate matters even for those who can\u2019t tell a merlot from a malbec. Napa boasts some of the country\u2019s most expensive farmland, selling for as much as $1 million per acre; a ton of grapes fetches two to four times as much as anywhere else in California. If there is any nook of American agriculture with both the means and incentive to outwit climate change, it is here.<\/p>\n
But so far, the experience of winemakers here demonstrates the limits of adapting to a warming planet.<\/p>\n
If the heat and drought trends worsen, \u201cwe\u2019re probably out of business,\u201d said Cyril Chappellet, president of Chappellet Winery, which has been operating for more than half a century. \u201cAll of us are out business.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I don\u2019t like the way the reds are tasting\u2019<\/h2>\n
Stu Smith\u2019s winery is at the end of a two-lane road that winds up the side of Spring Mountain, west of St. Helena. The drive requires some concentration: The 2020 Glass Fire incinerated the wooden posts that held up the guardrails, which now lie like discarded ribbons at the edge of the cliff.<\/p>\n
In 1971, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, Mr. Smith bought 165 acres of land here. He named his winery Smith Madrone, after the orange-red hardwoods with waxy leaves that surround the vineyards he planted. For almost three decades, those vineyards \u2014 14 acres of cabernet, seven acres each of chardonnay and riesling, plus a smattering of cabernet franc, merlot and petit verdot \u2014 were untouched by wildfires.<\/p>\n
Then, in 2008, smoke from nearby fires reached his grapes for the first time. The harvest went on as usual. Months later, after the wine had aged but before it was bottled, Mr. Smith\u2019s brother, Charlie, noticed something was wrong. \u201cHe said, \u2018I just don\u2019t like the way the reds are tasting,\u2019\u201d Stu Smith said.<\/p>\n
At first, Mr. Smith resisted the idea anything was amiss, but eventually brought the wine to a laboratory in Sonoma County, which determined that smoke had penetrated the skin of the grapes to affect the taste.<\/p>\n
What winemakers came to call \u201csmoke taint\u201d now menaces Napa\u2019s wine industry.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem with the fires is that it doesn\u2019t have be anywhere near us,\u201d Mr. Smith said. Smoke from distant fires can waft long distances, and there is no way a grower can prevent it.<\/p>\n
Smoke is a threat primarily to reds, whose skins provide the wine\u2019s color. (The skins of white grapes, by contrast, are discarded, and with them the smoke residue.) Reds must also stay on the vine longer, often into October, leaving them more exposed to fires that usually peak in early fall.<\/p>\n
Vintners could switch from red grapes to white but that solution collides with the demands of the market. White grapes from Napa typically sell for around $2,750 per ton, on average. Reds, by contrast, fetch an average of about $5,000 per ton in the valley, and more for cabernet sauvignon. In Napa, there is a saying: cabernet is king.<\/p>\n
The damage in 2008 turned out to be a precursor of far worse to come. Haze from the Glass Fire filled the valley; so many wine growers sought to test their grapes for smoke taint that the turnaround time at the nearest laboratory, once three days, became two months.<\/p>\n
The losses have been stunning. In 2019, growers in the county sold $829 million worth of red grapes. In 2020, that figure plummeted to $384 million.<\/p>\n
Among the casualties were Mr. Smith, whose entire crop was affected. Now, the most visible legacy of the fire is the trees: The flames scorched not just the madrones that gave Mr. Smith\u2019s winery its name, but also the Douglas firs, the tan oaks and the bay trees.<\/p>\n
Trees burned by wildfires don\u2019t die immediately; some linger for years. One afternoon in June, Mr. Smith surveyed the damage to his forest, stopping at a madrone he especially liked but whose odds weren\u2019t good. \u201cIt\u2019s dead,\u201d Mr. Smith said. \u201cIt just doesn\u2019t know it yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sunscreen for Grapes<\/h2>\n
Across the valley, Aaron Whitlatch, the head of winemaking at Green & Red Vineyards, climbed into a dust-colored jeep for a trip up the mountain to demonstrate what heat does to grapes.<\/p>\n
After navigating steep switchbacks, Mr. Whitlatch reached a row of vines growing petite sirah grapes that were coated with a thin layer of white.<\/p>\n
The week before, temperatures had topped 100 degrees and staff sprayed the vines with sunscreen.<\/p>\n
\u201cKeeps them from burning,\u201d Mr. Whitlatch said.<\/p>\n
The strategy hadn\u2019t worked perfectly. He pointed to a bunch of grapes at the very top of the peak exposed to sun during the hottest hours of the day. Some of the fruit had turned black and shrunken \u2014 becoming, effectively, absurdly high-cost raisins.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe temperature of this cluster probably reached 120,\u201d Mr. Whitlatch said. \u201cWe got torched.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the days get hotter and the sun more dangerous in Napa, wine growers are trying to adjust. A more expensive option than sunscreen is to cover the vines with shade cloth, Mr. Whitlatch said. Another tactic, even more costly, is to replant rows of vines so they\u2019re parallel to the sun in the warmest part of the day, catching less of its heat.<\/p>\n
At 43, Mr. Whitlatch is a veteran of the wine fires. In 2017, he was an assistant winemaker at Mayacamas Vineyards, another Napa winery, when it was burned by a series of wildfires. This is his first season at Green & Red, which lost its entire crop of reds to smoke from the Glass Fire.<\/p>\n
After that fire, the winery\u2019s insurer wrote to the owners, Raymond Hannigan and Tobin Heminway, listing the changes needed to reduce its fire risk, including updating circuit breaker panels and adding fire extinguishers. \u201cWe spent thousands and thousands of dollars upgrading the property,\u201d Mr. Hannigan said.<\/p>\n
A month later, Philadelphia Insurance Companies sent the couple another letter, canceling their insurance anyway. The explanation was brief: \u201cIneligible risk \u2014 wildfire exposure does not meet current underwriting guidelines.\u201d The company did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Ms. Heminway and Mr. Hannigan have been unable to find coverage from any other carrier. The California legislature is considering a bill that would allow wineries to get insurance through a state-run high-risk pool.<\/p>\n
But even if that passes, Mr. Hannigan said, \u201cit\u2019s not going to help us during this harvest season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Half the Insurance, Five Times the Cost<\/h2>\n
Just south of Green & Red, Mr. Chappellet stood amid the bustle of wine being bottled and trucks unloading. Chappellet Winery is the picture of commercial-scale efficiency, producing some 70,000 cases of wine a year. The main building, which his parents built after buying the property in 1967, resembles a cathedral: gargantuan wooden beams soar upward, sheltering row after row of oak barrels aging a fortune\u2019s worth of cabernet.<\/p>\n
After the Glass Fire, Mr. Chappellet is one of the lucky ones \u2014 he still has insurance. It just costs five times as much as it did last year.<\/p>\n
His winery now pays more than $1 million a year, up from $200,000 before the fire. At the same time, his insurers cut by half the amount of coverage they were willing to provide.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s insane,\u201d Mr. Chappellet said. \u201cIt\u2019s not something that we can withstand for the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are other problems. Mr. Chappellet pointed to his vineyards, where workers were cutting grapes from the vines \u2014 not because they were ready to harvest, but because there wasn\u2019t enough water to keep them growing. He estimated it would reduce his crop this year by a third.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t have the luxury of giving them the normal amount that it would take them to be really healthy,\u201d Mr. Chappellet said.<\/p>\n
To demonstrate why, he drove up a dirt road, stopping at what used to be the pair of reservoirs that fed his vineyards. The first was one-third-full; the other, just above it, had become a barren pit. A pipe that once pumped out water instead lay on the dusty lake bed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis<\/em> is the disaster,\u201d Mr. Chappellet said.<\/p>\n When spring came this year, and the reservoir on Dario Sattui\u2019s vineyard was empty, his colleague Tom Davies, president of V. Sattui Winery, crafted a backup plan. Mr. Davies found Joe Brown.<\/p>\n Eight times a day, Mr. Brown pulls into a loading dock at the City of Napa\u2019s sanitation department, fills a tanker truck with 3,500 gallons of treated wastewater and drives 10 miles to the vineyard, then turns around and does it again.<\/p>\n The water, which comes from household toilets and drains and is sifted, filtered and disinfected, is a bargain, at $6.76 a truckload. The problem is transportation: Each load costs Mr. Davies about $140, which he guesses will add $60,000 or more to the cost of running the vineyard this season.<\/p>\n And that\u2019s assuming Napa officials keep selling wastewater, which in theory could be made potable. As the drought worsens, the city may decide its residents need it more. \u201cWe\u2019re nervous that at some point, Napa sanitation says no more water,\u201d Mr. Davies said.<\/p>\n After driving past the empty reservoir, Mr. Davies stopped at a hilltop overlooking the vineyard.<\/p>\n If Napa can go another year or two without major wildfires, Mr. Davies thinks insurers will return. Harder to solve are the smoke taint and water shortages.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s still kind of early on to talk about the demise of our industry,\u201d Mr. Davies said, looking out across the valley. \u201cBut it\u2019s certainly a concern.\u201d<\/p>\nWater by the Truckload<\/h2>\n