Hearing the stories about the fires in Napa, Sonoma, Santa Rosa and Mendocino is incredibly sad and sobering. The loss of your home and all of your belongings, often including pets, is crushing. The loss of a business you’ve put your heart and soul into is devastating. The loss of people is beyond comprehension. These are losses that you never fully get over.

Beautiful memories will hopefully provide some solace, as will the incredible responses of neighbors, emergency workers and other concerned citizens.

At the Cal game on Friday, we had a moment of silence for all the loss. Most of us felt that that moment could have gone on for a lot longer than it did. But it felt good to send loving thoughts to communities that are suffering so much.

With all of this as a preface, I’m going to spend the rest of this article looking at the impact of the fire on wine production in 2017 and beyond. [Read more…]