![]() The problem is transportation: Each load costs Mr. ![]() The water, which comes from household toilets and drains and is sifted, filtered and disinfected, is a bargain, at $6.76 a truckload. Brown pulls into a loading dock at the Napa Sanitation District’s facility, 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. 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’s worth of cabernet.Įight times a day, Mr. Chappellet Winery is the picture of commercial-scale efficiency, producing some 70,000 cases of wine a year. Chappellet stood amid the bustle of wine being bottled and trucks unloading. Hannigan said, “it’s not going to help us during this harvest season.” Half the Insurance, Five Times the Cost The California legislature is considering a bill that would allow wineries to get insurance through a state-run high-risk pool.īut even if that passes, Mr. Hannigan have been unable to find coverage from any other carrier. The explanation was brief: “Ineligible risk - wildfire exposure does not meet current underwriting guidelines.” The company did not respond to a request for comment. This is his first season at Green & Red, which lost its entire crop of reds to smoke from the Glass Fire.Ī month later, Philadelphia Insurance Companies sent the couple another letter, canceling their insurance anyway. ![]() In 2017, he was an assistant winemaker at Mayacamas Vineyards, another Napa winery, when it was burned by a series of wildfires. Whitlatch is a veteran of the wine fires. Another tactic, even more costly, is to replant rows of vines so they’re parallel to the sun in the warmest part of the day, catching less of its heat.Īt 43, Mr. A more expensive option than sunscreen is to cover the vines with shade cloth, Mr. “We got torched.”Īs the days get hotter and the sun more dangerous in Napa, wine growers are trying to adjust. “The temperature of this cluster probably reached 120,” Mr. Some of the fruit had turned black and shrunken - becoming, effectively, absurdly high-cost raisins. He pointed to a bunch of grapes at the very top of the peak exposed to sun during the hottest hours of the day. The week before, temperatures had topped 100 degrees and staff sprayed the vines with sunscreen. Whitlatch reached a row of vines growing petite sirah grapes that were coated with a thin layer of white. 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.Īfter navigating steep switchbacks, Mr. Stu Smith’s winery is at the end of a two-lane road that winds up the side of Spring Mountain, west of St. ‘I don’t like the way the reds are tasting’ They hope to raise $11 million to refurbish it. A Bridge Goes Dark: A light installation across part of San Francisco’s Bay Bridge, had to be turned off because of the region’s harsh weather.But it does offer a 27-mile canvas of the city’s vastness and its diverse communities coexisting. Exploring Los Angeles: Walking down Rosecrans Avenue is not necessarily a pleasure.Struggling to Recover: Weeks after a brutal set of atmospheric rivers unleashed a disaster, the residents of Planada in Merced County are only beginning to rebuild.Proposition 22: A California appeals court said that the ballot measure, which was passed by state voters in 2020 and classified Uber and Lyft drivers as independent contractors rather than as employees, should remain state law.
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