Wine Openers

Firefighters watch as flames scorch Chile’s vineyards. Photo – Juan Gonzale/Reuters

2016 may go down as the year Nature caught up with the wine business.

Fires, freezes and bouts of hail were among the changes brought to the world’s wine industry and the people who work there.

Foremost, of course, was Chile,  which suffered what Chilean President Michelle Bachelet called “the greatest forest disaster in our history.”

More than 135 wildfires burned an estimated 1 million acres (404,685 hectares) of land, nearly four times the size of New York City, including more than 100 vineyards in the wine-producing region of Maule in Chile’s Central Valley, that country’s top wine-producing region.

Chile is the world’s fifth-largest wine-producing country and in 2015 exported to the U.S. alone more than $1.9 million worth of wine, according to the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service.

While forest fires are accepted part of Chile’s hot, dry summers, this year has been especially difficult, said NPR’s Phillip Reeves.

“These (fires) have taken on disastrous proportions, thanks to prolonged drought, strong winds and unusually hot weather,” Reeves said.

The wildfires destroyed towns, forests, plantations and vineyards and killed at least 11 people in Central and Southern Chile, several news reported.

Firefighters in Maule reported temperatures reaching over 100-degrees C (212 F), leaving homes without power after their cables melted. Three firefighters lost their lives while battling the flames.

Sergio Amigo Quevedo, winemaker at Cancha Alegre in the Maule region, lost six hectares of old vines to the fires.

“It’s hard to believe that vines you’ve taken care of with such love and sacrifice are lost along with part of the viticultural patrimony of Chile, because of a voracious fire caused by careless men,” he told Decanter.com.

Diego Morales of Bisogno Wines lost 25 hectares of 150-year-old País vines, having tried to fight the fire with his family.

Carlos Gálvez of Bisogno Wines said in an interview with The Washington Post, that unless his vines recover next season, he will lose half its wine production.The winery’s blog posted a video showing a hellish landscape of fire-destroyed vines.

“The fires destroyed our vines but not our dreams,” Gálvez said. “This is a low-income region, and many live off the vineyards. There are some who have lost everything.”

The fires are thought to have been started by arson.

There also were fires in South Africa, where up to 40 percent of the 300-year old Vergelen wine estate was destroyed; in California’s Lake County where an arson-caused fire razed 1,600 heroes (about 4,000 acres) including the Tuscan Village winery and community complex; and in France’s Languedoc-Rousillon more than 1,200 hectares were burned.

It was reported wild boars caught on fire and then ran, spreading the flames through the vineyards and forests.

The fires came only a few months after the Languedoc area received a deluge of hailstoms that damaged up to 60 percent of the 2016 grape crop, said Decanter Magazine.

Similarly, Chablis suffered two bouts of hail and an unseasonal frost reduced the forecast size of the harvest in Burgundy, Loire and Champagne.