The 2020 California Harvest -- The Good News

 So you've read all about the fires and smoke and tainted grapes that were thrown away or left to rot on the vines. My God, you're thinking, their 2020 wines aren't gonna be any good! Well, now that things have settled, wines are in the barrels, and some even bottled, we see a different story.

2020 Sauv Blanc is already on the market

California's harvest tonnage was down about 14% from 2019. This varies every year usually because of weather with 2020 being a combination of weather and smoke tainted grapes. The spring was dry. That didn't help the fire season, but was good for the wine grapes with an early growing season meaning many were picked before there was smoke damage. Also, the crop had a nice concentration of flavors in the fruit. 

The fire and smoke problems you heard about were mostly from the Napa area, but the state is almost 800 miles long and 250 miles wide. Napa makes up way less than 1% of the state's land. Napa still crushed about 60% of wine grapes as compared to 2019. So while that's a huge loss what's still there should be high quality.

While some vineyard owners and wineries are suffering from the losses there is also a sigh of relief over the quality of the wine that's coming from 2020.