Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 30
"Vineyards are
great defensible
space-a fire usually
doesn't pass right
through a vineyard.
It penetrates a short
distance and stops."
-Carole Meredith
homes in the neighborhood of Coffey Park.
This was the scene of the fire's most apocalyptic
images: a leveled townscape of building foundations,
chimneys and water heaters that looked conspicuously "post nuclear." It wasn't the "urban-wildland
interface" that torments fire managers in California
and across the US, where a third of American homes
are situated in or near forests; this was an urban
firestorm, with densely spaced houses igniting each
other in a self-perpetuating imbroglio. It rekindled
images of the Oakland hills, which until this fall was
the location of the state's worst fire disaster: a 1,500acre blaze that killed 25 people and destroyed 3,000
homes in October 1991. Similarly propelled by Diablo winds, that event had an equally unimaginable
quality: How could such a holocaust happen in such
a civilized place?
Though grapegrowing is famously dependent on
nature, and the wine industry benefits from the same
climate that threatens homes and businesses, somehow it seemed that Napa and Sonoma enjoyed an epicurean air of immunity. But wildfires in wine country
aren't exactly rare-in recent memory, destructive
blazes have occurred on Moon Mountain above
Sonoma Valley, around the Geysers near Alexander Valley, and in Mendocino County near Anderson Valley. In 1964, the little-remembered Hanley
Fire followed an almost identical footprint to that of
the Tubbs inferno, and in both 2015 and 2016, Lake
County-just north of Napa and east of Mendocino,
which itself hasn't gotten much attention for the
36,000-acre Redwood Valley calamity-was ground
zero for ruinous immolation. ("When you see a fancy
winery burning, it's different from a place that most
people haven't visited," observes David Ackerly, a
professor of integrative biology at UC Berkeley.) The
idea that all of Napa and Sonoma Valleys might burn
up-and make no mistake, both were on the edge of
Jeff Olsson
30
WINE & SPIRITS
DECEMBER 2017
incineration last October-seemed as unthinkable
as the notion of a nuclear missile striking the West
Coast.
Obviously it's time to think again. While vineyards
do provide a certain safety valve with regard to flammability, the wine country is no different from the
rest of California. As has now been demonstrated,
it's right in the line of fire.
The environmental inevitability of West Coast
wildfire goes back to the aforementioned Mediterranean climate. As indicated by the term, California isn't the only place with such a weather regime:
Besides the namesake region, the same meteorological pattern characterizes parts of Spain, Portugal,
Chile, South Africa and Australia, all of which have
recently experienced large, destructive wildfires.
Prior to European settlement of California, this
natural pyrogenic pattern was manipulated by Native
Americans, who intentionally set fires to facilitate
food-gathering, tool-making, medicine production
and warfare; the burns also served to reduce vegetative understories and prevent consuming "crown"
fires. It's thought that, on average, almost every
part of the state was inflamed every ten to twenty
years; Scott Stephens, a fire scientist at UC Berkeley,
estimates that before 1800 AD, 4.5 million acres of
California burned up annually. Long before human
habitation, the biota had adapted to recurrent fire:
Redwoods have very thick bark; Ponderosa pines
drop their lower branches; oaks resprout quickly,
chaparral plants immediately; some native seeds
need fire to germinate. Browsing elk and antelope
also reduced undergrowth, helping maintain a landscape characterized by a lot more (low-burning) grass
and fewer (high-burning) forests and shrublands.
With the arrival of Europeans and their cattle and
sheep, this picture was transformed. Native grasses
disappeared, permanent structures penetrated
the wilderness, and, most pertinently, the population increased from about a million inhabitants to
40 times that. In the 20th century, fire suppression
became a national credo, led by Smokey Bear: As
compared with the 4.5 million acres of California
that used to burn annually, today's amount is under
a million. Together with accumulating fuel loads, the
result as described by UC fire scientist Brandon Collins is "more continuity across landscapes": unbroken expanses of unburned matter that are more likely
to rage out of control. Factor in the urban-wildland
interface-housing and other human development
in and near woodlands, as growing populations
expand beyond the boundaries of cities and towns-
and you have the contemporary recipe for disaster.
Where does the wine country fit into this? In light
of last month, the answer is self-evident-but not
simple. "The wine industry is concentrated on the
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Wine & Spirits - December 2017
Contents
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - Cover1
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - Cover2
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 1
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 2
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 3
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 4
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - Contents
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 6
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 7
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 8
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 9
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 10
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 11
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 12
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 13
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 14
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 15
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 16
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 17
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 18
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 19
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 20
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 21
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 22
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 23
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 24
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 25
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - 26
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Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - Cover3
Wine & Spirits - December 2017 - Cover4
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