Aromas Fire Next Door to Sante Arcangeli Winery

October 31, 2023 – The Watch Duty app alerted me to the Aromas fire early this morning. The address looked very close to Sante Arcangeli Winery, so I reached out to winemaker John Benedetti. 

He reported that the fire scene was 100 yards from his back door, at the property adjacent to his winery. He said the property was rented by a neighbor who has been piling up whole trees for some time now, along with assorted ephemera. 

“He essentially has a junkyard there. We’ve always wondered what he was going to do with those whole trees!” For now, they’re turning into charcoal, embers, ash and smoke: precisely the stuff you don’t want anywhere near a winery in the middle of harvest. 

When Benedetti opened the winery door this morning, where he has 16 fermentations going in tank and in 1.5 ton fermenters, a bunch of charcoal blew in. 

“It’s really windy here,” Benedetti reported. “They’ve been bombing the fire with helicopters all morning. They’ve bulldozed the thing into three big piles, which are essentially the neighbor’s junk/wood pile, the neighbor’s house and the neighbor’s son’s house. They fire department has created a perimeter around all of it and are just letting it burn.” A fire like that could easily burn for days. The cause had not been disclosed by press time. 

When the firemen initially arrived on scene, they naturally had to shut the power off, and one of their fire trucks broke a water main, which his 80-year-old landlord and son set about fixing straight away. Benedetti and neighboring winemaker Ryan Stirm, who also rents space there, scrambled to find generators. 

“Ryan is great and he got one right away, just before I got a call from Ryan Beauregard saying he had one for me also. At least we have power and water now. I’m expecting 4 tons of Beauregard’s Coast Grade Pinot Noir in this afternoon.”

He said it was literally raining ash inside the winery because he has the roof vents open to let out the gas from the fermentations. Even though the buildings (which are mostly former flower sheds) are all metal, the loft is made of wood, and he was worried that could catch fire. Asked about the level of smoke inside and if it could impact the wine, Benedetti said that all the ferments are carefully covered, and when he went to check on them, the CO2 was so strong, it gave his nose quite a jolt. “I think there’s plenty of gas to protect the wine at this stage! Plus, it’s not as bad inside as it is outside.”

He was expecting his GM Cindy Kane to deliver the bins of Pinot Noir from Coast Grade this afternoon. This will be the second and final pick from Coast Grade, which will be mostly clone 828 and Pommard. The previous pick was about 2.5 tons of clone 828. 

“It’s the cleanest Pinot Noir fruit ever! I have never seen anything like it!” raves Benedetti, who brought in Coast Grade fruit for the first time last year. Ryan Beauregard is seriously proud of this fruit that caused him no end of sleepless nights and worry over the course of the long cool growing season. 

But all that vigilance and spraying and dropping of fruit appears to have paid off. “Ryan told me he would give me a $100 if I could find one spot of mildew!” says Benedetti. He will not be collecting on the bet. Instead, he might have some of the most outstanding wine to show for it. 

“I’m pretty sure that Ananda will be Coast Grade this year,” Benedetti says. “It’s always the very best of the barrels from the season. When the first batch came in, it was absolutely perfect chemistry!”

Tomorrow, he is bringing in Syrah from Lester Vineyard, which is just about 21.5 Brix now. “It’s actually coming in about the same time I usually pick the Syrah, only this year, it’s so weird, because I am picking Pinot Noir and Syrah at the same time.” 

He’ll bring in his last fruit of the season on Thursday, which will be the balance of the Chardonnay from Lester. It’s clocking in lean and lower in sugar, so this could be interesting. He’d previously picked the upper blocks of Chardonnay, which he put mainly into new barrels, saving his older barrels for the portion that will arrive on Thursday. It all balances out. 

Benedetti praises the talents of growers Ken Swegles and Prudy Foxx. “This is a star year for the growers that know their game. They really shine in conditions like we’ve had. I got decent yields and the long hang time has produced great flavors and perfect physiology. Prudy killed it, and so did Kenny,” he says.

Benedetti admits that waking up to this fire with warm temps and a strong offshore flow has added a lot of stress to his day, in the middle of harvest.  But, he says, “I feel good about everything. Well, except for working with the threat of ash.”

Fortunately, he’s got much of vintage 2023 barreled down, including Hand In Hand (what there was of it—a gorgeous but light crop), Saveria and Split Rail. He’s also fortunate to have a cellar master, John Howard, who was working at Hirsch during the fires of 2017. In comparison, this is no big deal. 

When we last spoke, he was heading home to prepare for the Halloween party for his son’s school. Most of the faculty and administrators, plus parents, end up in his living room. He admits they drained him of hard liquor last time, so today, it will be wine only. 

But knowing John, he’s got some special tequila hidden away somewhere. A well-deserved treat after a tricky start to Halloween.