Napa Valley is one of my favorite places to visit in the whole wide world. It is literally an hour and a half out my back door and I often go up for a day or for a weekend getaway. I am obsessed with the wine industry and find myself wishing that I was living the viticulture experience.
The fires in Northern California in 2017 was devastating to local small areas in and around Sonoma County and the general Northern California Coast. There was the fear of acres of vineyards being caught up in the blaze and that Napa Valley one of the most widely acclaimed wine regions in the world would be affected. If you don’t know, the wine industry depends greatly on tourism for its economic growth and stability when it comes to income and employment (Wright, 2018). Small towns like Sonoma and Napa Valley are two of the main areas that produce well-known wines like Robert Mondavi, Sutter Home, Stags Leap, Beringer, and Clos du Val. In addition, there are many famous restaurants in the area such as the French Laundry, Bottega, Bouchon’s and Morimoto’s (Iron Chef Morimoto from the Food Network) which are well worth the drive and culinary experience but suffer when tourist do not visit the region (www.visitnapavalley.com/).
The reality of the fires in the Sonoma and Napa areas is that it burned across seven counties in Northern California in October 2017 where people lost their lives, structures burned in the thousands, and insurance losses totaled well over $3 billion (Romano, 2018). Seventy-five winery-owned structures were lost but 93% of the wineries were unaffected (Romano, 2018). At this time, there is a great need for the local industries in the wine regions to remain strong and not lose business (Romano, 2018).
What you don’t know is that most of the wineries are dependent on social media. Through their websites, electronic newsletters, and Facebook accounts, they were able to communicate and interact with their customers and suppliers to do business even when people were unable to get into the area. What was really cool was the marketing campaigns and fundraising events that were launched by many of the wineries and restaurants to help fire victims and in the rebuilding of the wine country that was overcome by fire.
The San Jose Mercury News carried an article in their Lifestyle section “Wine Country fire relief: The latest restaurant, winery fundraisers” letting people know how they could help, seeing that many people sent emails to the wineries to express their caring thoughts and reached out to ask how they could help (Zavoral, 2017). I was one of them. The first thing was that the tourism bureaus in Napa and Sonoma asked for customers return business to help in the restoring of the local economies in the area (Zavoral, 2017). The second thing they did was to reach out to the general Bay Area to let everyone know about the restaurants that were scheduling fundraisers to benefit the fire relief (Zavoral, 2017). The part I loved the most was that the vintners collaborated to make it easy for the consumer to buy wines online so that they could donate a percentage of that money to the fire victims (Zavoral, 2017). A website was also set up at www.visitnapavalley.co and www.sonomawine.com for everyone’s convenience.
So, the next time you are visiting Northern California take the time to visit Napa Valley and Sonoma. Your purchases will help the community and the local small businesses.
References
Ramano, A. (2018). Northern California Wine-Country Wildfire Impact Study Shows Signs of Hope. Wine Spectator. Retrieved from https://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/Northern-California-Wine-Country-Wildfire-Impact-Study
Visit Napa Valley https://www.visitnapavalley.com/
Wright, J.L. (2018). Napa, Sonoma wineries are pouring as California wildfire memories fade. USA Today. Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/experience/food-and-wine/2018/04/19/napa-sonoma-wineries-open-after-california-wildfires/528107002/
Zavoral, L. (2017). Wine Country fire relief: The latest restaurant, winery fundraisers. The Mercury News. Retrieved from https://www.mercurynews.com/2017/10/24/wine-country-fire-relief-the-latest-restaurant-vintner-fundraisers/
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