Primitivo From the Ashes
We were on our annual pre-harvest camping trip, one that we took every year before the two-month insanity of pre-dawn mornings and late nights in the cellar started all over again. It was Saturday, August 14th of 2021, 13 months after Amy and I “pushed all in” to buy our little vineyard and winery in the mountains. That summer there had been a few wildfires in the Eastern Sierras, not far from the Nevada border, but a relatively safe distance from our home in Fair Play, situated in Southern El Dorado County.
That Saturday night, as we were preparing for bed and about to step in our tent, we looked up through the pine trees and saw three fire scout planes flying overhead. Not uncommon given the time of year and the fires to the east, but we briefly through that it was a little strange to see them flying north from where we were camping. When we woke up the following morning, we were a bit surprised to see the canyon we were in drenched in the all-to-familiar hazy smoke of wildfire. At first, we didn’t think too much of it as the winds usually come from the East at night in the Sierras but didn’t know for sure as we were out of cellular service. We got up and made our coffee and breakfast and headed down to the river for one last cool morning dip before heading back home.
As we played and splashed in the river with Cameron, the smokey fog began to thicken in the narrow canyon. Amy and I agreed that it was probably time to cut our river play short and get out of the canyon, just in case there was something else going on that we weren’t aware of. When we got back to our camp and were just finishing up a ranger pulled up in his well-worn Nissan pick-up truck to inform us that a small fire had started overnight near Omo Ranch, about 6 miles West down the canyon from where we were camping and equidistance (in the other direction) from our home and winery. That was how we learned about what would become known as the Caldor Fire, a fire that would, over the course of the next few weeks ravage California’s northern Sierra mountains to the tune of 221,000 acres, an area roughly the size of San Diego.
We quickly packed up the last of our things and headed home, right into the direction of Omo Ranch and the heart of the fledgling wildfire. About 30 minutes later, as we trepidly approached Omo Ranch, we were surprised to see the parking lot of the small local school, Indian Diggins, which houses about 30 total students from K – 12th grade, filled with CalFire vehicles and firefighters, seemingly sitting around, as if they were preparing for training drills with little urgency. The politics of wildfires is an interesting (and frequently frustrating) topic, which I won’t get into here, but with the Caldor Fire starting on Federal land in the El Dorado National Forrest, there was essentially nothing the CalFire firefighters could do at that point, but prepare for a fire that might eventually burn past invisible political jurisdictions. And that, it most certainly did.
With the U.S. Forest Service taking its usual wildfire position of “Let It Burn,” the Caldor fire quickly spread north up the canyon of the middle fork of the Consumnes river and within 48 hours it had burned through the town of Grizzly Flats, one which we had visited as a family for the first time just 10 days earlier.
When we arrived back home on Sunday, August 15th, we unpacked our camping supplies only to start getting together our emergency “Go-Pack” as a precautionary measure in case we needed to evacuate. That night as we lay in bed, searching for information about the fire, we could see the red-orange glow of the building inferno and plumes of smoke rising to the east from our bedroom window. Early the next morning, with the fire dangerously close, but seemingly heading away from our direction, I woke up and prepared for our first pick of the year, which I had pre-scheduled with our picking crew for Tuesday, August 17th. Our Gold Dust Vineyard Estate Primitivo was approaching perfectly balanced numbers for picking and ripening grapes don’t tend to yield, even to approaching wildfires. As we went to bed that Monday night, with the orange glow of the wildfire that had already taken out Grizzley Flats looming closely in the distance and slowly starting to move west towards us from Omo Ranch, our anxiety began to peak and at some point in the evening, Amy decided that she was going to preemptively evacuate with Cameron the following morning.
As the picking crew was bringing in the very first grapes of our 2021 harvest, only the second vintage from the property we purchased just a year prior, Amy loaded up Cameron to escape to a hotel just east of Sacramento. I, along with friend Jeff, whom I have known since the first day of 2nd grade, prepared to process the 2.5 tons of Primitivo that had just been dropped in five bins on the crushpad. Jeff and I worked diligently that day, hoping that the power would stay on long enough to finish our work. As we had just finished cleaning the last of the equipment around 6PM that evening, the power went out and withing a few moments we both received mandatory evacuation alerts on our phone. We had to leave and soon.
You often hear people talk about the things they would grab if a fire was raging through their house, but up until this point in my life, I had never experienced the real anxiety the thought process where you are forced to assume that your life’s work is about to be completely destroyed and now you have to leave all that behind and pack the things you need the most into a mid-sized SUV. As I went through the winery, packing essential items like camping gear, headlamps, batteries, water, etc., rapidly snapping all the pictures I could take on my phone for insurance purposes. I finally grabbed a few of my favorite paintings my grandmother had made before she passed away as well as three paintings that my good friend Jared had done for some wine labels and as a wedding present for Amy and me. Lastly, I packed a few cases of our wine, a case of Syrah I had made from Cameron’s birth year, a case of our 2014 Red Wine blend, and a case of mixed bottles from the previous year, our first vintage on our brand new property that was now directly in harms way. As I was rolling down the winery door that day, I remember pausing for a moment to take one final look and the place that Amy and I had worked so hard for, a place where we had dreams of raising our son, teaching him our chosen trade, while fostering a respect for the important things in life, like the value of hard work, respect for the land and the living creatures we share it with; knowing that all of those things might shortly be a dream from the past. As I did that, I caught a glance at the fermentation bins from the Primitivo that we had just picked a process a few hours earlier. It seemed like a lifetime ago. In a day or two they would start spontaneously fermenting with the native yeast from our vineyard, the way wine has been made for thousands of years of this planet. The work necessary to turn those grapes into wine had been done and now it was time to trust the natural process, a process that gave no thought or care to the approaching wildfire because even admits the chaos and destruction, life continues on. In that dire moment, filled with fear and sadness, there was something that was strangely comforting to me in that thought. I didn’t know if we would have a home to come back to and I certainly thought that the 2021 harvest was over just as quickly as it began.
We evacuated as a family to a cabin in Arnold, about an hour and 45 minute drive from the winery. Over the next few days, the Caldor fire started moving closer and closer to our property. CalFire crews were digging fire lines about 1,000 feet down the road and sheriffs set up road blocks, cutting off access to our winery, where the Primitivo was slowly starting fermentation in our dark, abandoned cellar. Once a ferment kicks off, it needs to be tended to, the grape must punched down daily in order to keep the grow and maintain a healthy ferment and prevent off flavors and flaws from creeping into the young wine. Knowing that if our facility were to avoid disaster from the fire, that fermenting Primitivo might be the only wine we get from the ’21 vintage and it also needed protecting. I started making daily trips from Arnold back to our winery, avoiding the sheriff road blocks by driving up a rough dirt road that leads through our property, and finally parking under a set of pine trees on our raw land to avoid detection by the ever-circling helicopters. I “sneak” into our own property via an alternative entrance gate next to the Primitivo block and then into the winery where I would spend 30 minutes in cellar punching down the active ferments by the light of my cell phone. The beautiful aromas of a healthy ferment rising in the darkness as I worked in silence gave me comfort and for those brief moments, alone each day, I lost the feeling of a being a helpless person waiting for disaster to and I became a winemaker again. Every day for a week, I locked up the winery and trudged a half mile through the vineyard and pine trees to get back to my hidden car, not knowing if the building would be there for me to return to the next day.
On the night of Wednesday, August 25th after CalFire had dug eight rows of lines about a quarter of a mile east of our facility, they back lit the earth and brush, starting a fire that would meet the oncoming Caldor fire and eventually steered it north, down the canyon where airtanker planes had been dropping fire retardant for the previous few days, a move that saved our property from disaster. Five days later, with the power finally restored, we were able to return to the winery and resume the rest of the 2021 harvest with grateful hearts and a renewed sense of motivation.
Last week, as I worked into the evening, alone on the crushpad, bringing that very same Primitivo to its final resting place in bottle, a light rain began to fall. I couldn’t help by think about how oddly fitting it was that a wine born in the flames of the Caldor was finishing its long journey home in the damp, cold air of those same Sierra Foothills. It reminded me that life is delicate, unpredictable, and cyclical, but it is also perseverant and once again, I was grateful to just feel like a winemaker.