JAMES MOLESWORTH: Keeping an Open Mind on 2020

For Northern California, 2020 was a year that started with a shutdown due to a global pandemic and then saw the growing season come to a halt due to devastating wildfires.

- JAMES MOLESWORTH

"As the pandemic progressed, we were really worried about how are we going to farm, pick fruit and make wine. There were a lot of unknowns," says Sam Kaplan, winemaker for Memento Mori, a boutique Napa Cabernet producer. "And then when it came to the fires, we had to test for smoke taint. But doing that in a pandemic and with the crush of everyone testing, samples were taking weeks and months to come back.

But we just kept plowing forward." I sat down with Kaplan and a handful of Napa winemakers and growers, including Maya Dalla Valle (Dalla Valle), Françoise Peschon (Drinkward Peschon), Andy Erickson (Favia), Jennifer Williams (Zeitgeist), Natalie Winkler (Salvestrin) and Vine Hill Ranch vineyard owner Bruce Phillips.

As a group, their determination to Napa 2020 shutdown a wildfires. I'd where the age forge ahead in 2020 reminded me of conversations with the Rhône's Philippe Guigal and Michel Chapoutier years ago, when discussing their decision to release their lineup of single-vineyard wines in 2002, a mostly forgettable year for Rhône reds.

"Obligation" was the word they used, independently of each other, noting that as shepherds of prized parcels they felt a duty to let those vineyards speak, even in a particularly difficult harvest.