Andrew Jefford

‘The jolts of 2020 have been an education – the lesson is care’

A year ago, I anticipated ‘a series of sharp shocks’ for the wine world over the next decade. They’ve begun swiftly, jolt on jolt, during the extraordinary year now drawing to a close. I wrote about fires in the Adelaide Hills in the April issue, and the Covid pandemic in June. Most traumatic of all for the wine world was the Glass Fire of late September and early October in Napa, Sonoma, and Lake Counties. Many Decanter readers will have visited these wine regions and may remember a now-devastated property in its former glory days of sunlight and contentment. The Meadowood Resort and Newton, in particular, were both exquisitely Californian, albeit in different styles: the lavish and expansive; the manicured and pretty. Today they’re ashes.

I visited Spring Mountain back in 2016, relishing the long drive up through the forest and the airy vineyards up on the valley edge, rolling away in free-spirited style. My guide was Cain’s Chris Howell, a good friend and a thoughtful interlocutor of his landscape. Both Spring Mountain Vineyard itself and Cain have been devastated, too, with Cain losing two harvests. Chris’s home is gone.