California’s wine country, including the famed Napa and Sonoma valleys, faces a climate crisis so dire that it’s posing an existential threat to the future of the state’s industry.
Grapes have been hit with one extreme after another. This year’s season started out with a deep frost that iced over verdant green buds, nipping them right off the vine. For the crops that survived, the freeze quickly gave way to drought and heat. Just in the past week, record-breaking temperatures baked parched vineyards. Then there’s the ever-present threat of wildfires and smoke damage.
The state’s wine-grape production is expected to drop almost 4% this year to 3.5 million tons, according to US Department of Agriculture estimates. What’s more striking: It will be the second-smallest crop of the decade, trailing only the fire-ravaged harvest from 2020.
