Dear Shafer friend,
After 40 years in the wine business, we’ve gotten used to the fact that Mother Nature throws down some challenges. This year it wasn’t rain, heat, cold, insects or any of the usual issues. It was fire and smoke.
As you may know many of our neighbors in the northern part of the Valley have been affected by wildfires that started on Sunday morning; most wineries are fine, fortunately, but some of them have been damaged and a few will need to be rebuilt completely. We look forward to working with them, and the rest of the community, to recover and move forward preserving the beauty and well-being of our home here.
Thanks to the many of you who’ve called or emailed asking about Shafer. The winery is in the clear. Our staff is safe and their homes and families are in good shape.
There is another issue though related to smoke and the future of Shafer’s 2020 vintage that we need to share with you.
For quite a number of days in August and September smoke from fires throughout the state settled in our vineyards and was absorbed by the fruit. As a result, while our Cabernet, Syrah, and Chardonnay has been beautiful to look at, we’ve had to make a heartbreaking decision – we cannot harvest the 2020 vintage because we cannot guarantee to you that the wine will be of the very highest quality.
Smoke taint is a tricky adversary. You never know when it will emerge. It can show itself during fermentation, months later in the barrel, or even years later in the bottle. At no point in our history have we ever sold a bottle of wine we didn’t believe was the best that we could produce. This decision is a continuation of that commitment.
Please understand that this is solely a Shafer decision based on our fruit. There is simply no playbook for this. Everyone has to make the best judgement call they can based on their specific circumstances. We have only the highest regard, respect, and compassion for everyone involved in this situation, who like us are figuring out their next steps.
We hope we can count on your continued support and look forward to many more great vintages to come.
Warm regards,
Doug Shafer