Napa Valleys on fire: between Sant’Elena and Calistoga vineyards and farms destroyed

Drought and wind gusts fuel the fire front in California, where hundreds of acres have been burning every day since the end of August. Wrapped in flames, after the fire outbreaks on Sunday, Napa Valley, the beating heart of American wine production, with Glass Fire literally reduced to ashes 11,000 acres of vineyards, wineries and accommodations around Sant’Elena and Calistoga. Among the estates that were practically destroyed or seriously damaged were Chateau Boswell and Castello di Amorosa. However, the threat, concerns another 2,200 facilities, while 1,800 people have already been forced to evacuate. Hourglass has also recorded considerable damage, both structural and in the vineyard, with the wine in the cellar that should have been saved from the fury of the flames, defined by a Californian oenologist at Wine Spectator as “brutal and implacable”. Tuck Beckstoffer, a winemaker in Sant’Elena, told the US magazine how the exceptional effort of the firefighters “saved the cellar last night, but everything else was lost”.Thus the bill of damages is growing, which since August 26, the day of the first fires in California, has caused 26 deaths, destroyed 7,000 structures and caused thousands of displaced persons, with another 5,000 people urged by the authorities to leave the area. A drama, yet another, in which the grape harvest abruptly interrupted in vast areas of Napa takes second place.