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Home > Blogs > Uncorked > Archives > 2006 > January > 03 > Entry
Wine Country a Flooded Mess, but Vineyards Should Emerge Unscathed
Welcome back! We’ll get to the deluge in California Wine Country in a second, but in case the holiday caused you to miss the last week or so of Uncorked, here’s a quick update with links to the entries you might have missed: We posted a list of Top Wines of 2005 (hey, if the Spectator can do it, so can we!). Time’s a wastin’ to enter my fellow wine blogger’s Dr. Vino’s Year End Wine Quiz 2005 in which Dr. Vino is giving away a case of wine for top prize! And we explored Decanter Magazine vs. Robert Parker: A Good Ole’ Cat Fight, which we’ll revisit again in the coming days. (My thanks to John Gillespie, owner of Wine Opinions, for pointing out that his firm, and not Decanter magazine, issued the news release we wrote about.)
Now, on to the news of the day (other than the Buckeye bowl victory, of course. Irish fans: care for a “Ginn” and tonic this morning?). You may have seen dramatic video in recent days on the flooding in northern California, which prompted the following story from the Associated Press:
Storms Make Mess in Calif. Wine Country
By MICHELLE LOCKE
The Associated Press
NAPA, Calif. (AP) - Winter storms made a mess in California’s wine country, but the rains were not expected to wash out the region’s valuable grape crop, officials said.
Weekend storms washed debris over vine trellises, knocked down posts and sent soil downhill. But with the 2005 harvest … safely in weeks ago and the vines dormant for the winter, vintners were not expecting serious problems.
“There’s certainly been a lot of vines under water, but they’ve been under water before,” said Nick Frey, executive director of the Sonoma County Grape Growers Association, on Monday.
The big problem facing vintners was repairing damage to downed posts and flooded equipment, cleaning out the rubbish washed in by urban floodwaters and digging out from sediment.
Hillside growers face the opposite problem of building up soil eroded by the storms.
The storms hit hard over the weekend, swelling the Napa River to 5 feet above flood stage and swamping several downtown blocks. Napa officials said about 600 homes and 150 businesses were flooded, causing about $50 million in damage. Estimates for vineyard flooding were not immediately available.
There'll be debris washed up and there probably was some debris taken off the property,'' said Chris Carpenter, winemaker at the Cardinale winery in Oakville.The vines are pretty resilient and they’re all shut down, so they can be completely submerged and they’ll all come back.”
People have planted crops in flood areas for millennia,'' he said.What’s happened is they’re also starting to plant houses in flood areas because they’re beautiful places to be in.”
So, maybe this week might not be the best time for your wine country getaway, unless you want to take your mop and your squeegee with you.
Cheers!
Mark Fisher
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