The 2020 wildfires devastated Oregon’s wineries. A Newberg winery turned its spoiled grapes into stronger stuff — but they say another bad fire season will wipe them out. Starting on Sept. 7, 2020, the smoke poured into the fertile Willamette Valley: a toxic mix of heavy gases, soot, metals and other pollutants that covered and infiltrated all it touched. A historic windstorm had combined with hot, dry conditions to fuel five simultaneous “megafires” around Oregon. More than a million acres burned in only a few days. Wine grapes are especially susceptible to smoke. The compounds in it bind to sugar molecules during fermentation, resulting in bitter, undrinkable wine. But the really sinister thing about smoke and grapes, according to Jim Anderson, owner of Patricia Green Cellars in Newberg, is that the level of damage isn’t known until fermentation. A day after the fires began in 2020, Anderson and his team started picking what they could. He had contracts to fulfill — agreements that made no exception for smoke damage. Weeks later, after fermentation, he assessed what he had. About half that year’s vintage could be salvaged. He’d need to use every winemaking trick he knew and sell the result on his second label for half the price of a standard Patty Green pinot. But the remainder of the 2020 vintage—around 12,000 gallons of pinot noir — was, to his mind, ruined. “Anything picked after the 10th of September was pretty much shot in some way,” he tells Oregon Business. A SPIRITED RESPONSE BY GARRETT ANDREWS PHOTOS BY JASON E. KAPLAN Patricia Green Cellars owner and co-founder Jim Anderson 22
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