Wildfires suck.
Wildfires suck. There is no ignoring them if you live in certain corners of the world that are set routinely ablaze these days during prolonged fire seasons. They hurt everything. Hearts, homes, harvests. The devastation they wreak, extends far beyond flammable things. Given the calamitous fires of 2020 in the Napa Valley, there's a public perception regarding these wines that continues to do economic damage, long after the embers have been put out. Concerns of smoke tainted wines have left a bad taste in wine drinkers' mouths about entire vintage.
Some of that concern is justified, and if you've ever had a wine that's been affected, it would be understandable if you avoided the possibility of opening a bottle of liquid ashtray. But here at Wine Spies' HQ, we've had so many exceptional 2020s already pass through our tasting panel, we wanted to set the record straight. If you take a pass on every wine from this year, you'll be missing out on some real gems, and we assure you that it's less of an issue than you may think.
We've been here before
2020 wasn't the first year of major fires in wine country. 2017 was a rough, rough year for vintners all over around here. 250 fires covering 245,000 acres that was called the Northern California Firestorm.
Yet, as Master of Wine, Lisa Perrotti-Brown, reported for Wine Advocate “I’ll start by cautioning readers not to pre-judge all Napa 2017 wines because of the possible effects on quality by the Labor Day heat wave and then the October wildfires. Not all wines were adversely affected by either or both. There is absolutely no doubt that this is a highly variable vintage, but there were some absolutely extraordinary, astonishingly beautiful wines made this year.”
We took that to heart. Tasted through hundreds of wines to find ones that were astonishingly beautiful. There were plenty. We loved them and drank every single one of those winners with the same pleasure we’d drink any other well-made wine from any given vintage.
At first we saw a similar public reaction to the vintage. But now 5 years later, the stellar wines of 2017 fly off the shelf.
The same applies to 2020. Decanter was the first to report that “the 2020 vintage is 'not lost' although the impact of smoke and wildfires is likely to mean less wine overall.” After the concern settles down and people inevitably start uncorking their 2020s, they'll start to realize that the wines put in the bottle were excellent.
Reputation is everything
Wineries learned a lot from 2017. So many grapes were damaged by smoke taint that, and insurance companies positions were very unclear on whether they would cover costs. Winemakers did what they do best - turned to science for a solution. Many novel techniques were developed and attempted, some better than others. In some cases, after attempting complex techniques to remove the undesirable flavor compounds, the resulting wine seemed much improved, but not great overall and certainly lacking complex character. It was blended in with other unaffected wines so as not to be a total waste. But that just had the impact of adulterating the good wine, and the volatiles that give the unpleasant aromas could still be detected. Wine lovers noticed, and those wineries got an earful. Those wines did not sell.
By now, wineries big and small have recognized it's just not worth the reputational damage to put questionable wines into the bottle. We can tell you already, we've been able to count the number of 2020 bottles affected by smoke on one hand. That was not the case in 2017.
And for Karen McNeil, author of The Wine Bible, "In the end, of course, the most valuable asset a winery has is its reputation. So while some Napa wineries made no 2020 wine, others whose grapes were in, or who were not in the path of fire or smoke, made wines they say will be excellent. For the valley as a whole, the 2020 harvest will be one of the smallest on record - a reminder that nature, above all, calls the shots. And precisely because there won’t be a lot of 2020 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon around in years to come, collectors are already snapping up the few beautiful wines that were made.”
We've got your back
We can give you our solemn oath, as Wine Spies Agents, that all 2020s you’ll see on our site will be, as always, painstakingly scrutinized to assure fault-free deliciousness. The first premise that we have always worked from is that if we don't love a wine, we don't sell it. Period. While our tasting panel has a diverse range of palates, we assure you that no one is given to licking dirty ashtrays. A smoke-tainted wine will NEVER appear on the site, so you can be confident that's simply a non-issue next time you're checking out a delicious Napa 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon on Wine Spies. Or any other wine or vintage for that matter.
We’ll close with how Napa Valley Vintners had brilliantly summed the 2017 vintage up: “Mother Nature throws curve balls; winemakers catch them.”
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