Special Report
12 California wines that define 2020
These wines, which make up a case, are not only delicious they tell the story of what happened with wine in this tumultuous year
By Esther Mobley |
Updated: Dec. 16, 2020 9:23 AM
2020 has been an earth-shattering year for the American wine world. And it would have been even without the coronavirus.
Major fires plowed through some of California’s most prestigious terroir, destroying wineries and threatening an unprecedented volume of wine grapes with the insidious malady of smoke taint. The nationwide reckoning with racial injustice forced the wine world to confront its inequities in a new, stark way and then allegations of sexual assault within the country’s most elite sommelier organization forced a similar reexamination of its deeply ingrained sexism.
Evacuating Santa Cruz County’s homeless amid disaster presents a difficult task [Santa Cruz Sentinel, Calif.]
Dec. 13 SANTA CRUZ When it comes to disaster response, the public’s immediate focus in the moment often is on safe evacuations.
Safe escape planning and timely evacuation notice were prominent among resident concerns expressed during a town hall meeting last month related to the dangers of mixing pending winter rainfall and the devastation wrought by the CZU August Lightning Complex fires. Santa Cruz County Assistant Director of Public Works Ken Edler said debris flows, the deadly masses of mud, rocks, boulders, entire trees and sometimes vehicles and homes, often referred to as landslides or mudslides, move up to 30 mph. First responders cannot fight them in the same way they would a fire and evacuation are the most prudent response, authorities say.
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This is the Dec. 10, 2020, edition of Boiling Point, a weekly newsletter about climate change and the environment in California and the American West.
More than 111 million acres of U.S. wilderness have been designated since 1964, when the Wilderness Act was signed by President Johnson. It’s the highest level of protection the federal government offers, ensuring that wild lands remain free of permanent roads, motor vehicles, commercial enterprise and structures of any kind.
The law’s definition of wilderness is the stuff of legend: “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”