February 19, 2021
SACRAMENTO, Calif., February 18, 2021…Due to the strong interest in diversity and inclusion issues, and the very positive response to the two sessions on the topic at the 2021 Unified Wine and Grape Symposium, the Unified decided to make recordings of the sessions available to view for free.
The two sessions are: Strength in Diversity: Achieving Meaningful Change for Business Success in the Wine Industry, featuring Dorothy Gaiter of Grape Collective, Vinny Eng of SF New Deal, Theresa Heredia of Gary Farrell Winery, Carlton McCoy of Heitz Cellar and Dan Vu of E. & J. Gallo. Herstory: A Lesson in Leadership for the Wine Business, featuring Leticia Chacon-Rodriguez of UC Davis, Kimberly Charles of Charles Communications, Remi Cohen of Domaine Carneros, Mimi Casteel of Hope Well Wine and Karen Ross, Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
‘We are not all in the same boat. We are all in the same storm.”
The above quote from a poem by writer Damian Barr went viral in April 2020 when Mr. Barr posted it to Twitter. “Some are in yachts,” he continued, and “some have just the one oar.” The poem is about staying non-judgmental and being kind. It was retweeted a couple thousand times before it was shared widely by the Wall Street Journal.
If you were a large wine company with national brands distributed in chains and club stores in 2020, you were killing it and your ship was cruising.
Todd Fitchette
Chardonnay grapes remain one of the four-leading varietals grown in California. Of the more than 15 million wine grape vines sold in California for planting in 2020, nearly one-fourth of those were Chardonnay, which tied for first with Cabernet Sauvignon as the most popular planted varietals. While COVID-19 quickly killed on-premise wine sales, the oversupply of grapes that growers flooded the markets with over the past decade was diminished.
Between the COVID-19 pandemic and California wildfires, the state s wine grape industry fared better than one might expect, though not all was worthy of a toast.
Wine industry insiders last year sounded alarms of oversupply and growth realities that did not match the optimism of a few years ago. Among those leading the call to significantly reduce supply was Jeff Bitter, president of Allied Grape Growers in Fresno, Calif.
Todd Fitchette
Massive wildfires are becoming the norm each year in the West. These conflagrations that can destroy whole towns also can leave a bad aftertaste in the winemaking process, destroying any chance of creating a marketable wine. The heavy smoke that can linger for weeks, even from fires far away, can impact the winemaking process.
From a bad-news, good-news perspective, the massive conflagrations that blackened over 10 million acres in the West seems to have positively impacted an oversupply of wine grapes while leaving growers stymied over winery decisions to cite smoke taint as a reason to reject grapes.
Out of the mass fires over the past several years was birthed a coordinated effort to understand how wildfire smoke affects wine grapes and how their interaction with natural compounds in wine grapes can make or break a good wine.
Smoke Taint s known knowns and unknown unknowns
Researchers Discuss Progress During Unified Wine & Grape Symposium
About 100 wildfires burned 10 million acres across the western United States in 2020, resulting in $680 million in crop losses in California and Oregon alone. Long-term impacts to the wine industry have been estimated at $3.7 billion, according to Bruce Pan, who leads the chemistry research group at E. & J. Gallo Winery, citing industry figures.
“The long-term impacts from these fires are pretty staggering,” Pan said Tuesday at a forum at Unified Wine & Grape Symposium on managing uncertainty and risk during wildfires.
During the presentation, Pan and other speakers discussed the many unknowns facing smoke taint scientists, including the difficulty of establishing thresholds to assess the risk of smoke exposure to the fruit – and wine.