On the evening of Sept. 27, when winemaker Chris Howell saw flames on a ridge a mile away from Cain Vineyard and Winery, he and his wife Katie Lazar knew they had to leave.
A few hours later, Cain was engulfed by the region’s latest blaze, the Glass Fire, which has since metastasized into a group of fires known as the Glass Fire Incident. Wind-propelled flames and smoke billowed up from the canyon, between the two ridges, and moved over from the Sonoma side of the mountain. It destroyed Cain’s winery, an historic 1871 barn, barrels of the highly regarded 2019 vintage that was aging in the cellar, as well as all of his new wine harvested this year.
Howell has spent 30 years here in the Napa Valley estate, high on Spring Mountain. He built the winery’s reputation with Cain Five, an innovative cabernet blend. He says that about one-fifth of the steep, 90-acre vineyard with spectacular, to-die-for views looks all right. This week, he’ll be assessing the rest and hoping for a good 2021 growing season. “Cain is a place, not a building,” he says philosophically.
Like many other Napa winemakers this year, he won’t be releasing any 2020 wines.
“2020 is my new four-letter swear word,” emailed Tor Kenward, who owns Tor Wines. “I’ve lived through 43 harvests with earthquakes and fires, and this has been the most difficult of them all.” He won’t be making three of his usual single-vineyard cabernets. He hopes some good cabs will be made somewhere in the Valley, but says there won’t be many.
Napa has been through earthquakes and devastation before, but this fire season has been the worst ever, with more wineries lost this year than in 2017. Many of the two dozen I reached said this will probably be the year they make no cabernet whatsoever.
Spring Mountain, spared during the 2017 fires, has been hit hard. Casualties include LVMH-owned Newton Vineyards, noted for single vineyard cabernets and gorgeous gardens. It, too, will forgo a 2020 cabernet, though the bottled wine in the cellar has been saved. Two small boutique wineries, Sherwin Family and Behrens Family, are also gone.
They and Cain are among at least 18 wineries and vineyards in the northern part of the Napa Valley that have been damaged or destroyed over the past seven days—and the fire is still only 30% contained as of Monday, Oct. 5.
Where It Stands
The main building and restaurant at Meadowood Napa Valley luxury resort burns after the Glass Incident Fire moved through the area on Sept. 28. Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America
What began on the morning of Sept. 27 as a 20-acre brushfire in Napa’s eastern hills has now become a fast-growing conflagration covering more than 65,580 acres in Napa and Sonoma counties, as of Monday morning, according to Cal Fire. A reported 826 structures have been destroyed and an additional 163 damaged. On Sunday morning, the City of Calistoga reported that in Napa County, at least 264 commercial properties and 173 homes have been lost, with an additional 57 damaged. Cal Fire expects those numbers to rise. So far, no deaths have been reported.
The fires are from the northern part of the valley, from Calistoga to just south of St. Helena, and on the east and west hillsides. They’ve expanded from Howell Mountain, Diamond Mountain, and Spring Mountain well into Sonoma. The fire now threatens areas on both sides of the valley south of St. Helena, including Rutherford, home to Inglenook, owned by film director Francis Ford Coppola.
The list of destroyed or damaged wineries this week grew longer. In addition to those on Spring Mountain, it includes boutique winery Château Boswell and historic Burgess Cellars on Howell Mountain, purchased just weeks ago by billionaire Gaylon Lawrence, owner of Napa icon Heitz Cellar. Treasury Wine Estates, which owns Sterling Vineyards, issued a statement that buildings were damaged, though details were scant.