The year 2018 was a stellar year for wine grapes, as harvests hit record yields up and down the West Coast. But it was also a year of powerful fires on the heels of catastrophic blazes in 2017.
As climate change has become more destructive and unpredictable weather more commonplace, the threat to vineyards has become unavoidable. But in the Rogue Valley in southern Oregon, a test case is unfolding that demonstrates that even in the face of sizable crop loss and broken contracts—and the resulting inability to resell a sensitive agricultural product before it rots—wine grapes can be rescued.
“We’ve made a real effort to learn about smoke taint and how it might be managed, which is interesting because the West Coast is going to have issues with fires,” says Ed King, co-founder of the Willamette Valley’s 28-year-old King Estate Winery, now the largest biodynamic winery in the country.
King and his fellow winemakers have become adept at using fruit from fire zones. Some of the most popular vintages from Willamette Valley Vineyards, one of the state’s leading wine producers and the only publicly held winery in Oregon, are the 2002 Biscuit Fire Syrah and Merlot. (The 2002 Biscuit Fire was one of Oregon’s biggest wildfires in the past century.)
“People were amazed; the wines turned out beautifully,” says winery director Christine Clair. “The Syrah had deep notes of plum and blackberry and rich concentration. It’s a wine that has lots of life left in it.”
Rogue Valley is drier and hotter than the Willamette Valley, its illustrious neighbor to the north. On July 15, 2018, a fire from a lightning strike began to tear through the region. Growers anxiously watched their vineyards as gusty winds and low humidity urged the flames along. At containment, almost 125,000 acres of urban areas, forests, and private land had burned.
In 2016, Oregon’s wine grapes had a market value of nearly $167 million, making them the state’s most valuable fruit crop. Oregon ranks fourth in the U.S. in wine production and third for premium wine grapes. In 2018, according to Nielson, Oregon’s wine sales grew 12.4 percent, or eight times the national number of 1.3 percent, with an average price of $16.29 per bottle vs. the national average of $7.37.
Broken Contracts
Over the past decade, California wineries have increasingly contracted fruit from Oregon to meet demand for lower-priced, quality grapes. One frequent buyer is Copper Cane Wines & Provisions, a collection of labels from fifth-generation California winemaker Joe Wagner. For his label Elouan, which he has marketed as an Oregon wine, Wagner has annually purchased thousands of tons of Oregon grapes and trucked them to California for processing, including grapes from the Rogue fire region.
To brand a wine “Oregon,” winemakers must use 100 percent Oregon grapes. Wagner wasn’t, and the federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau advised him to re-label the wine or “cease and desist.” Subsequently Wagner claimed the Oregon grapes had smoke taint based on sensory analysis—a quick, in-house fermentation test, as opposed to more concrete lab tests—and canceled his 16 contracts in the state, equivalent to 2,000 tons of grapes worth roughly $4 million. (Wagner did not respond to emails for this story.)