After the blaze: Climate change creates challenging conditions for California wineries
Wildfires signal perhaps the most immediate threat California’s $43 billion viticulture industry faces from a warming California. Yet they’re far from the only challenge. Wineries from the San Joaquin Valley to the Sierra Nevada foothills are all suffering from intensifying droughts and hot, almost endlessly dry seasons. Both problems are predicted to get worse in the coming decades. For grape farmers, that could be devastating: The rainless skies of the last two years resulted in highly stressed crops and seriously diminished yields.