VERAISON
My father warned me it was going to be hot and windy during our visit to Napa—the first time my children would be seeing their grandparents in close to a year thanks to the pandemic. But the threat of triple-digit temperatures did little to dissuade me from packing our car to head to my childhood home. Late August in Napa is gorgeous—morning fog stretching across the valley floor like an ocean beneath our Howell Mountain home, burning off by noon to reveal scores of cabernet sauvignon vineyards. This time of year also marks the onset of veraison for most grapes, when green berry clusters begin to ripen to deep purple. The summer heat accelerates sugar development; cool nights preserve the fruit’s acidity and freshness. The valley buzzes with excitement as vintners test sugars in anticipation of the beginning of harvest for the region’s reigning grape.
Cabernet sauvignon crops account for 50 percent of Napa’s total grape production and 68 percent of its crop value. So when the temperatures spiked and the winds picked up during veraison in the weeks leading up to the 2020 harvest, so did anxiety among vintners. The morning we were set to drive north to Napa, my father called with a simple message: Don’t come home.
The first flash of lightning had struck Hennessey Ridge around 6:30 in the morning on August 17, 2020. Alexander Eisele was preparing for a day of work at his family’s vineyard, just over the ridge in Chiles Valley, when his wife and son came running inside. The two had been admiring the dramatic lightning storm from the safety of the front steps, and then they saw smoke.
In wine country, small brush fires in August are nothing out of the ordinary; besides, vineyards have traditionally acted as natural firebreaks. Eisele thought little of the smoke as he drove to Volker Eisele Family Estate, where he spent the morning alongside a vineyard crew tending to the estate’s fabled old-vine cabernet, removing leaves and dropping any unripened clusters in preparation for harvest. It wasn’t until noon, after the Diablo winds picked up to 20-to-40-mile-per-hour gales over the neighboring Vaca Mountains
