Breathe. Everyone just take a deep breath in. (I know the air quality is bad.) Hold. Slowly release. We will get through this. We will get through this and 2020 will just be that year that happened that one time. We’re in the thick of it now, so it seems overwhelming and horrible and unforgivable. And it’s ok to feel that way. Let yourself feel that way. Then breathe. Then move forward. Move forward and let’s help each other through this.

Listen, much of the news this week centers around the fires that are strewn across California, many of which are concentrated in and around our state’s various (not just Napa/Sonoma) wine countries—North, Central and South. As a Sonoma resident, I’d like to let you all know that I am safe and healthy. Please send your thoughts, prayers, and charitable donations to those who are immediately affected. (Direct Relief, Napa Valley Community Foundation, California Fire Foundation, Red Cross, UndocuFund, Sonoma Family Meal)

A few helpful resources: County of Sonoma: Sonoma County Fire Incident Map; Press Democrat: What to pack in your evacuation bag

But let’s not forget, there’s still an election going on. And the US is not the only going going through issues at the moment—read about what’s happening in Australia cellar doors and international trade market and South Africa’s battle with prohibition.

I urge you, though, scroll through. It’s not all bad news. I love this profile piece by Dorothy Gaiter on Garry Farrell’s Theresa Heredia (cheers to this proud Latina, LGBTQ Sonoma winemaker); this first-person account by Jeanne Vito, an Afropean wine entrepreneur brought up in Chablis, working in the wine industry and living between South Africa, Togo, and Germany; and it looks like the Finnish are onto some kind of hangover cure. 

That’s all from me for now.

Breathe. Stay safe. Stay health. Stay positive. Breathe

LOCAL NEWS

Multiple fires across the North Bay have forced many to evacuate. Here’s a list of essential items to have ready in case of an emergency, according to the Red Cross. READ MORE…

winesearcher: Wineries Harvest while Wine Country Burns

The fires are still blazing, but most vineyards have avoided damage or smoke pollution.

Large swathes of California continued to burn on Thursday from fires ignited by more than 10,000 lightning strikes. Firefighters are desperately overworked. Yet, even as homes and a hospital were evacuated, many wineries report clear skies and no smoke in the vineyard. READ MORE…

San Francisco Chronicle: Wildfires near California wineries compound issues in an unusually tough harvest season

The 2020 vintage was always going to be a challenging one for California wineries, thanks to the safety challenges and economic repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic. But the state’s winemakers could never have imagined that excessive heat, lightning storms and raging wildfires — which, in addition to threatening buildings and people, also bring the possibility of smoke that could damage flavors in the grapes — would also accompany the outset of this year’s harvest. READ MORE…

Press Democrat: Fires grow, evacuation orders expand in Sonoma County as crews struggle in sweltering heat

In contrast to the wind-driven fires that have brought repeated disaster to the region in recent years, this week’s incidents are grinding, ground wars in remote, often inaccessible areas of dense timber that haven’t burned in decades, in most cases, and thus create intense heat, torching trees and running up canyons so that fires spread in many directions at once, Lowenthal said. READ MORE…

SacBee: California severely short on firefighting crews after COVID-19 lockdown at prison camps

This week, state prison officials announced they had placed 12 of the state’s 43 inmate fire camps on lockdown due to a massive outbreak at a Northern California prison in Lassen County that serves as the training center for fire crews.

Until the lockdown lifts, only 30 of the state’s 77 inmate crews are available to fight a wildfire in the north state, prison officials said.

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California’s incarcerated firefighters have for decades been the state’s primary firefighting “hand crews,” and the shortage has officials scrambling to come up with replacement firefighters in a dry season that is shaping up to be among the most extreme in years. READ MORE…

EATER: Kamala Harris Brings Food Justice to the Democratic Ticket

As vice president, experts say Harris would be able to advance her years-long focus on hunger, worker protections, and environmental justice

Just four days before Senator Kamala Harris became the first woman of color chosen as the running mate of a major U.S. political party’s (presumptive) presidential nominee, she co-authored an op-ed in CNN calling on grocery store chains to reinstate “hazard pay.”

“While top grocery chains rake in billions in profits during this pandemic, these frontline workers cannot choose to work from home like the corporate executives of these companies do,” Harris wrote with Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW). “The responsibility to properly protect and support store workers lies with these executives, who must make the decision to consistently pay workers a wage that justly compensates them for the clear and present dangers of their jobs during the pandemic.” READ MORE…

The Guardian: There’s no way we’d go back’: will Covid-19 end free wine tastings forever?

Complimentary wine flights are a cornerstone of Australian cellar door visits – but as wineries reopen, they’re rethinking the tradition

For decades free wine tastings have been an essential part of the Australian cellar door experience. They helped turn a nation of beer drinkers on to the charms of shiraz, sémillon and sagrantino.

Before the Covid-19 shutdown, there was already a move away from this tradition: the number of Australian wineries charging for tastings went from 29% in 2017-18 to 50% in 2019, according to Wine Australia’s 2019 cellar door survey report. As wineries have reopened post-shutdown, more are questioning the value of giving away their product free. READ MORE…

Vino Joy News: China considers targeting Australian wine

What Australian wineries and wine merchants in China are fearing the most is about to happen, as sources told Bloomberg that wine is among a list of potential agricultural products drawn up by Chinese officials to retaliate Australia over its push for coronavirus inquiry.

If the news is indeed confirmed, it would mean a dramatic escalation of relations between the two countries and a huge blow to Australian wine exports to its most lucrative market, China. READ MORE...

Wine Spectator: South African Winemakers Exhale as Sales Prohibition Ends

The government’s alcohol ban, originally implemented during the early days of the COVID-19 lockdown, has inflicted millions of dollars in damage

South African vintners breathed an immense sigh of relief yesterday. President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government began allowing alcohol sales again, albeit with some limitations, after a months-long ban.

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The coronavirus pandemic has put South Africa’s small winery owners on a roller coaster. A ban on domestic sales and exports of all alcohol was imposed in March as lockdowns began. Exports were removed from the ban in May. And on June 1, the government allowed domestic sales. But only a week and a half later, a sales ban was enacted again. Trading and the distribution of alcohol of any kind were completely prohibited.

The government said the measure was an effort to keep hospital beds available for COVID patients by reducing the number of alcohol-related injuries. But the ban and the ever-changing rules sowed confusion and frustration among vintners. READ MORE…

EATER: The 2020 James Beard Awards Are Effectively Cancelled

And no chef and restaurant awards will be handed out in 2021, either

There will still be an online event on September 25, but rather than announcing new winners, it will honor the winners in categories that were announced previously, including the America’s Classics, Lifetime Achievement, Humanitarian of the Year, Design Icon, and Leadership Awards. The upcoming broadcast will also address the struggles the industry has faced over the past five months and ways to build a more equitable restaurant industry going forward. Winners of the 2020 Media Awards were announced, in a delayed online-only virtual event, on May 27. READ MORE…

Bloomberg: Hangover Cure Successfully Tested on Drunk Subjects in Finland

A dose of 1,200 milligrams of amino acid L-cysteine was found to reduce alcohol-related nausea and headache, while a dose of 600 milligrams helped alleviate stress and anxiety, according to a study published in the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism by researchers at the University of Helsinki and the University of Eastern Finland. READ MORE…

Blogs Worth a Read

Taken from the list of Blogs I follow regularly, here are just a few posts from this past week I think are worth a read. Shoot me a note if you have suggestions of blogs to follow or want your blog included on that list.

Grape Collective: Gary Farrell’s Theresa Heredia on Early Picking, Great Vineyards, and Overripe Bananas

Wineries all over California bear the name of someone who sold the brand – and hence their own name – long ago. Sometimes that doesn’t work out so well. In 1986, we had an excellent Gamay from Charles Shaw, whose name was later bought and is now better known as Two-Buck Chuck. Sometimes it works out fine. Almost 20 years ago, Gary Farrell sold his pioneering winery in the Russian River Valley and it continues to produce outstanding, site-specific Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. Much of that success can be attributed to Theresa Heredia, the winemaker since 2012, and to a management team that simply wanted the best person for the job – and found a third-generation Mexican-American woman at a time when, even more than now, there were not many winemakers who were either. READ MORE…

Jancis Robinson: Jeanne Vito – a spiritual return to Africa

I am Jeanne Vito. My forename is from France where it was given to me. My family name is from Benin. I was born and raised in Chablis. Both my parents came from West Africa – cradle of Vodun.

I am Jeanne Vito. My skin is as black as that of my father, my mother and my three siblings. I grew up in a white wine region, on a white wine farm owned by a white family. READ MORE…

SpitBucket: The New Wall of Wine & Why Some Wineries Aren’t Even Making it to the Shelf

Smartphones have changed the way we live and think about everything. Having a world of knowledge at our fingertips has fundamentally reprioritized how we approach information–what’s important to remember vs. what we can search for on the fly. And while, as a wine geek, I hate to admit this, for a lot of consumers, “wine knowledge” is pretty low on the totem pole of things worth remembering.

Wine Intelligence has noted this trend for some time but points out that this, interestingly, coincides with greater overall consumer confidence in buying wine.

Why?

Because a consumer doesn’t need to fret about knowing the difference between Pinot noir in Burgundy compared to Oregon when all they need to do is Google it. READ MORE…

Wine Curmudgeon: Penrose Hill v. Mabray: Did wine journalism win a significant legal victory?

A federal judge has ruled that a winery’s attempt to sue for critical comments on Twitter and in a blog post probably wouldn’t survive a First Amendment challenge. In doing so, this may be one of the first times a judge has said that the same constitutional protections that apply to print journalism also apply to social media.

The case, Penrose Hill v. Mabray, was actually decided on a technicality; U.S. District Judge Donna Ryu ruled that the plaintiff waited too long to bring the lawsuit under California law. But in her ruling, Judge Ryu said that though Penrose Hill and its CEO, Philip James, were free to sue again, she doubted that even an amended suit would withstand constitutional scrutiny as it applies to free speech. READ MORE…

Jamie Goode: In Nagano, Japan: Suntory Shiojiri Winery

Suntory have three wineries. The mother winery is in Yamanashi, there’s the Shiojiri winery (this one), and there’s also a winery in Nigata. They make 5 million cases, of which just under a million bottles are from Japanese-grown grapes. We visited with winemaker Naoki Watanabe, who was trained in Bordeaux. Since 1983, Suntory have owned Château Lagrange in the Médoc, and are also partners in Beychevelle and Beaumont, as well as Robert Weil in the Rheingau. READ MORE…

Wine Enthusiast: Top 40 Under 40 Tastemakers

The term “tastemaker” can carry a range of definitions. So, how does Wine Enthusiast interpret it? For this list, we celebrate people who are making change now, whether they’ve been working in the industry for six months or 16 years. They’ve made recent impacts to shift the drinks landscape in lasting and meaningful ways, from bringing new consumers into wine, to championing progressive organizations or initiatives, to innovating in how they approach the wine business, to creating opportunities and educational spaces. READ MORE…

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**Please note: all reviews and opinions are my own and are not associated with any of my places of business. I will always state when a wine has been sent as a sample for review. Sending samples for review on my personal website in no way guarantees coverage in any other media outlet I may be currently associated with.**