Page 311 – Sonoma Magazine

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop Picks Favorite Sonoma County Spots

January 2018

By Sonoma Magazine Staff

Shana Bull contributed to this article.

Loved and loathed lifestyle website Goop, created by actress-guru Gwyneth Paltrow, does more than offer women advice on how to best take care of themselves. In a series of travel itineraries and guides, Goop staff also like to keep readers on the pulse of the hottest spots to visit around the globe. Recently, Goop published their “Guide to Sonoma Valley,” featuring recommendations of places to eat, sleep, wine taste and shop from Sonoma to Sebastopol.

While we don’t have anything against celebrities in wine country, we’d like to clarify that Sonoma Valley (a valley located in southeastern Sonoma County) is not the same as Sonoma County (a county north of San Francisco) or Sonoma (a town in Sonoma County). So what Goop really meant, when including places like Sebastopol and Forestville in their guide, was “Sonoma County.”

Now that this slight geographical glitch is sorted out (we don’t hold it against you Gwyneth, you are not alone in this “Sonoma” confusion), let’s move on to more important issues: what does Gwyneth Paltrow and co. like to eat and drink in Sonoma County (kale? acai? turmeric?) and where do they rest their coiffured heads? If you are as curious as we are, click through the gallery above to behold Goop’s favorite spots in Sonoma ~~Valley~~ County.

Romantic Things to Do in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino

January 2018

By Sonoma Magazine Staff

mages 1-3: di Rosa’s Gatehouse Gallery. Photo: Israel Valencia, courtesy di Rosa, Napa. Image 4: di Rosa’s courtyard featuring Viola Frey’s sculpture Group (1985). Photo: Israel Valencia, courtesy di Rosa, Napa.

When flowers and bonbons aren’t enough, escape to Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino for retreats, restaurants and outings sure to light the fire. Click through the gallery for all the romantic details.

Coffey Park Elegy: Santa Rosa Writer Recalls the Spirit of a Lost Neighborhood

January 2018

By Gabe Meline

A Coffey Strong sign is posted in front of a burned home along Tuliptree Road, in the Coffey Park area in Santa Rosa on Thursday, November 2, 2017. (Photo by Christopher Chung)

For a national audience, they were often called the “Wine Country fires” and accompanied by images heavy on flames and smoke threatening the vineyard idyll. But Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park neighborhood is a stark reminder that the fire burned across class lines.

Aerial photos of Coffey Park’s 1,347 homes reduced to ash say it all — the it-could-happen-anywhere destruction of a typical American suburb, relatable to everyone in the country. In the week after the fire, drone footage of postal service trucks delivering mail to Coffey Park’s burned-down houses dominated Facebook feeds, and story after story poured in from residents who lost everything.

Coffey Park was a close-knit community, one square mile in all, bounded to the west by farmland, to the east by Highway 101. Most of its two- and three-bedroom houses were built from the same handful of blueprints copied and flipped and replicated, over and over, to cut costs for first-time homebuyers. Living in them were families from diverse ethnic backgrounds — white, Latino, Vietnamese, black, Filipino, American Indian.

And while the neighborhood was often referred to in news reports as working class, Coffey Park’s history shows a demographic climbing the rungs of the economic ladder. To know just how deep those hard-working middle-class roots run, one only has to go back to the 1980s, when much of the neighborhood was built.

Growing up in Coffey Park back then meant going to Kmart, which shared its giant building with a discount grocery store, Rainbow Foods. Both catered to lower incomes — particularly the Kmart in those days, with a robust layaway counter and a cheap cafeteria with brown plastic paneling. On weekends, your family ate at The Big Yellow House, a restaurant behind Kmart with a simple menu served both upstairs and downstairs.

To the north sat one of the area’s first McDonald’s restaurants, with seating for kids inside a giant plastic train car, and to the south sat Polynesian Village, a restaurant with a live hula show. Farther south stood the two-story King’s Office Supplies, selling staplers and three-ring binders — and even offering typewriter repair — before Office Depot came to town.

Repairing instead of replacing was a way for Coffey Park families to save money at Asien’s Appliance in the 1980s (still open today), right at the entrance to the neighborhood on Piner Road.

Just across the intersection stood the ultimate in cost-cutting retail: Bare Woods, a furniture store that sold unfinished, stain-it-yourself tables and chairs for those willing to try their hand at a paintbrush to save a buck or two.

Around the perimeter of Coffey Park, the area’s agricultural past still lingered. During pie season, one of your neighbors on the edge of the neighborhood might let you pick apples from their backyard orchard. Your mom might even send you out to the walnut trees on Piner Road to scoop up fallen fruit. At the end of Coffey Lane, you’d sometimes sneak onto the old farm equipment in the field, pretending to drive the tractors. Other kids used farm culture against you as an insult: You went to Comstock for junior high, and then to Piner, which everyone else in town called “the hick school.”

You didn’t have money for movies or the mall, so you’d rely on cheap thrills. That often meant riding your skateboard all day at the “Chicken Ditch,” a culvert of banked concrete across from Kentucky Fried Chicken. In the late summer when the tall grass turned to dry weeds, you and your friends would lift large sheets of cardboard from the dumpsters of B& L Glass to sled down the embankment at the Bicentennial Way overpass. Or you’d hitch a ride with an older sibling’s friend, and then go out to Barnes Road and drive the long, open, empty stretch at about 70 mph in the completely irresponsible time-honored high school drag-race tradition. (If you were brave, you’d continue onto San Miguel Drive, where a steep incline in the asphalt at the street’s railroad tracks would launch cars into the air.)

Of course, well before the fire, things had changed since those years when Coffey Park was built. Shakey’s Pizza, where you’d saved your quarters to play video games, got shuttered — as did the long-forgotten Taco Time next door, which sold 79-cent tater tots cleverly renamed “Mexi-Fries.” And Skool Daze — the former school-supply store where teachers bought pencils and chalk for class — turned into a gun and ammunition store.

Now, things have changed in ways we never expected. Coffey Park is a face of fires that did the unthinkable, leaping over Highway 101 and leveling a whole community. The cleanup here has begun and soon the rebuilding. Coffey Park will return.

There’s something in the soil here, an authenticity and no-nonsense approach to the everyday needs and concerns of Santa Rosans. Whatever it’s called, it can’t be taken away.

Rising from the Ashes: Sonoma County Faces Long Road to Recovery Following the Fires

January 2018

By Glen Martin

In Coffey Park, Traci Lattie and her partner Wayne Hovey intend to rebuild, and are letting everyone know, Monday Oct. 23, 2017. (Photo by Kent Porter)

Weeks after flames roared down into Sonoma County from the east and laid waste to northern Santa Rosa, scorched cars still littered Coffey Park’s streets and driveways, many framed by puddles of aluminum from melted rims and engine blocks. They were remnants of a neighborhood that once hummed with activity — block parties on holidays, basketball games in the street — nearly all of it reduced to ash, twisted metal and buckled masonry over several terrifying hours in early October.

More than 5,100 Sonoma County homes were destroyed in the unprecedented firestorm, which burned on in three major blazes over three weeks. The deadliest and most destructive, the Tubbs fire, claimed 1,347 Coffey Park homes, leaving a relentless gray, umber and black moonscape broken only by the occasional surviving conifer, the even rarer green lawn.

Still, this devastated neighborhood on the western extent of the Tubbs fire represents a frontline in a comeback that began in earnest just a month later. Dump trucks and excavators rumbled into the area and cleanup crews have been at work ever since, day and night, readying the burned lots for whatever lies ahead.

For Tom and Michelle Tantarelli, whose Miller Drive home in Coffey Park burned, along with all the others on their block, there is no question: They plan to rebuild.

“We’ve been in this home for 39 years,” said Michelle Tantarelli, a registered nurse. “But you can’t look back on what you lost. You can’t dwell on it. You have to move forward, and build a new life and new memories.”

The path ahead for thousands of other fire survivors in Sonoma County is not so evident or straightforward. The fires exploded out of the early morning darkness and left rubble, tears and so much uncertainty in their wake. They inspired true heroism and generous philanthropy, but they were deeply traumatizing, killing at least 44 people across Northern California — including 24 in Sonoma County — and inflicting emotional wounds that will be as challenging to address as the profound economic upheaval and staggering financial losses, estimated at more than $7.5 billion.

“Our grandkids were visiting, and we got out of here with them and the clothes on our backs. That’s it,” said Tom Tantarelli, a retired Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy. Five residents of the Coffey Park area were killed in the fire. “Something like this, it strips you down. It makes you humble.”

The region’s pre-existing housing crisis, the disparate reimbursement rates provided by insurers to affected homeowners and the heavy blow to the local economy, including hundreds of job losses, will influence who decides to stay, whether they rebuild and how quickly they do so, disaster experts say.

“You’re going to see some people leave the area simply because their insurance won’t cover the cost of rebuilding. That seems very likely,” said James Lee Witt, who served as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under President Bill Clinton and was brought into the area by Rebuild North Bay, a new group seeking to assist with the recovery.

About 90 percent of owners who lost homes during the fires, including the Tantarellis, signed on with the federal government to clean up their properties. That enrollment indicates a strong regional intent to persevere and move forward quickly with the work, which federal officials say could wrap up early this year. By December, crews contracted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had cleared about 900 burned home sites, leaving thousands more to go in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park and Fountaingrove neighborhoods, as well as fire-ravaged Larkfield-Wikiup to the north and Sonoma Valley to the south.

For-sale signs on burned properties have already popped up in many of those areas, where residents are confronting construction logistics and timelines defined not only by their insurance policies and financial wherewithal but the availability of help — engineers, architects, contractors — and potential payoff once a home is complete. It will be worthwhile to many in the prime of their lives, a lost cause for others.

On Miller Drive, at least, the consensus seems clear.

“I’ve talked to about 10 of my neighbors,” Tom Tantarelli said. “Only one of them isn’t going to rebuild. This neighborhood means a lot to people. The neighbors mean a lot to each other.” n his three short years in the state Legislature, Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, has seen vast swaths of his North Coast district consumed in five blazes that are now among the top 20 most destructive wildfires in California history. The list is topped by the Tubbs fire, and includes three others that burned across Sonoma

Valley and Napa and Mendocino counties in October. The North Bay fires destroyed more than 8,500 structures, including 6,200 homes. Including the deadly Valley I fire in Lake County in 2015, the five major fires torched 400 square miles, eight times the size of San Francisco.

McGuire’s experience in Lake County, where major fires have rampaged every year since 2015, has convinced him that a quick cleanup is an essential first priority to a full recovery.

“Second, we have to transition people who lost their homes, especially families and seniors, from temporary shelter into long-term housing. That means any and all options — apartments subsidized by state and federal agencies, modular homes, fifth-wheel trailers — everything. This is probably our greatest immediate challenge. The housing market in the North Bay was one of the tightest in the country before the fires, and the disaster just exacerbated a situation that was already critical.”

The costs for local governments — in lost property taxes from destroyed homes and businesses — is likely to run into the tens of millions of dollars, he said, straining what’s available to maintain public services, repave roads and pay for police and fire protection.

“Right after the fires started, the Governor’s Office made a commitment that no need will go unmet, that the North Bay will get all required resources,” he said. “But we also need federal help.”

That was clear to Witt, the former FEMA director, whose tour of the fire zone in Santa Rosa revealed ruin almost without parallel in his long career, including 350 federally declared disasters, from floods and hurricanes to wildfires and earthquakes.

“It’s one of the worst I’ve seen,” Witt said, noting the scope of physical damage and financial loss weren’t the only factors contributing to Sonoma County’s woes.

“It’s also the way it happened, the speed of the fires, the fact that people were forced from their homes at night and lost everything in seconds,” Witt said. “It’s devastating.”

Rebuild North Bay was formed by civic and business leaders, including Sonoma-based developer and lobbyist Darius Anderson, managing member of Sonoma Media Investments, which owns Sonoma Magazine. He drove Witt around after the fires and drafted him to help bolster and speed the recovery.

“We want to get our lives back to normal, so it’s essential that we move efficiently and as rapidly as possible. But we have to take the time to rebuild smarter, safer, and greener,” said Anderson.

“We started Rebuild North Bay because we knew we were going to need a coalition, a strong coalition to get things done,” he said. “We knew we had to get everyone on board — business, civic and labor leaders, farmers, builders, environmentalists, neighborhood groups.”

The first thing county residents must remember, Witt said, “is that recovery won’t happen overnight. Full recovery from the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Southern California took 15 years. New Orleans is 10 years and counting into rebuilding from Katrina. For Sonoma County, I think it’ll take at least five years for a substantive recovery.”

The most dangerous time for disaster victims can be from six months to a year after the event, he said.

“People go through a few weeks of initial shock, then they’re motivated by a determination to reclaim their lives,” Witt said. “And after that they get actively engaged in lining everything up, trying to rebuild their homes, get on with their lives. But they find they’re hampered when they try to replace all their lost paperwork, and when they deal with insurance companies and government officials. And then the frustration

builds, and ultimately, the anger. You have to keep reminding yourself that it’s going to take time — more time and effort than you think.” a couple of blocks from the Tantarellis, Alice and Ron Daley combed through the ashes of his brother’s rented Coffey Park home. It was late A October, and they were hoping to find something salvageable. They didn’t have much luck.

“My brother lost everything,” said Ron Daley, of Forestville. “A $20,000 motorcycle, his really valuable firearms and comics collections. Everything. I came out here when everything was going up to try to save some stuff. I have neuropathy and don’t have much sensation in my feet, and my nephew said, ‘Hey your shoes are burning.’ We had to get out.”

Daley kicked a metal ammo can that looked like a sieve from bullet perforations. It had been full of 9 mm pistol ammo that had cooked off in the flames.

“Maybe in 10 years this place will look like it was,” Daley said. “But a lot of people aren’t coming back here, especially renters like my brother. A lot of people here were struggling just to stay in the middle class. They didn’t have many options before the fire, and they have fewer now.”

Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane agrees that for residents on the lower rungs of the economic ladder, the fires have delivered a blow that likely leaves many now hanging on by their fingertips.

The disaster took out 5 percent of Santa Rosa’s housing stock, and the fires followed three years of rock-bottom rental vacancy rates in the county. Last year, median home prices soared well above the pre-recession peak. All that means the housing emergency sparked in October is far from over, Zane said.

“We’re still in flux.

We don’t know who will or can stay, what the commitment of the feds and states ultimately will be, whether the bankers and developers are willing to take some risks,” Zane said. “Meanwhile, we’re losing people — valuable people, the people who support this community, who work in the vineyards and the hospitality and service industries.”

An effort on the order of the Manhattan Project — responsible for crafting the first nuclear weapons — is needed to respond to crisis, she said “We have to do it all — expedite rebuilding and approve new developments,” Zane said. “That doesn’t mean intruding on green space or urban boundaries. We have to build density — build up, not out — and we have to do it fast. Our population is aging, and we can’t afford to lose our workforce. Our economy is making huge gains, especially in the tourism sector, but we need to provide housing for the people who are doing the work.”

It figures to be a heavy lift for everyone involved: local, state and federal government, relief funds and organizations, the builders who are now laying out ambitious plans for Coffey Park and Fountaingrove, and coordinating groups like Rebuild North Bay.

“We have to build back with reasonable expectations about both time scale and equity recovery,” Witt said in early December. “Yes, it’s going to be expensive.

We also have to ensure that people have the means to fill the gaps left by insurance shortfalls — through HUD, Fannie Mae, and any other available means. While FEMA recently received disaster funding, nothing has been specifically earmarked for wildfires. But our team is working on that, and I do think we’ll see those appropriations.”

O nly one other Santa Rosa neighborhood lost more homes than Coffey Park, and that was in the upscale subdivisions of Fountaingrove. Home to many of the county’s business executives, physicians and government leaders, the forested hillsides and ridges were developed over the past three decades on what is now the city’s northeastern boundary. The last major wildfire in the county, the 1964 Hanly fire, burned through Fountaingrove when it was mostly ranchland. This time, flames incinerated 1,519 homes and killed two residents, including Tak-Fu Hung, 101, the oldest person to die in the fires.

Indra Chaliha, a Kaiser Permanente pediatrician, lost her Sedgemoore Drive home to the blaze. She was one of the more than 200 doctors burned out by the fires. Seventy were fellow Kaiser doctors.

“I’ve only been living here for two-and-a-half years, so I still owe the bank,” said Chaliha, surveying the blackened foundation of her home. “If I rebuild, I’ll ultimately regain a lot of my equity, but if I sell as is, I lose it. So for me, the choice is clear.”

Chaliha expects to run a fairly long and arduous gauntlet of permitting and construction hassles, but she hopes to be back in her new home with her young daughter by the summer of 2019. The two fled in her car just ahead of the flames at 2:15 a.m., saving little but their passports.

“My father came to this country from India at 17. He studied, and he became an electrical engineer. He always told me that knowledge is everything, education is power — that it doesn’t matter if you lose material things. His memory, the things he said, are a source of strength for me now.”

Some of her Fountaingrove neighbors won’t be rebuilding, Chaliha said — particularly elderly residents who feel ill-prepared to negotiate the red tape or disinclined to start anew.

Mike Agil, a developer in his 50s, is considering walking away from his property on Bristlecone Court. Agil says he feels confounded by the governmentmanaged cleanup process. He contends it allows private companies contracted for the work to charge inflated prices, which come out of homeowner insurance.

“Don’t tell me about cleanup costs,” Agil said. “I know — I’m a developer. A lot of these foundations could be salvaged, which would really reduce rebuilding costs and expedite construction. But the agencies all insist that they [the foundations] have to go. It’s been crazy. They drag their feet, they obstruct, they don’t respond. I could get a crew in here and clean up this property right now. The city has my plan on file. They could quickly amend it for green updates, stamp it, and I could start building immediately. But that won’t happen. Even under the best scenario, this lot will still be bare in two years. So I’m thinking really hard about putting up a ‘for sale’ sign and walking away.”

Local building officials and experts hired by the city of Santa Rosa have concluded that the temperatures and duration of the firestorms that ravaged Sonoma County make any surviving foundations unsalvageable. K But Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Coursey said he understands the general frustration.

He’s been feeling it himself in an ever-pressing list of needs, questions and tasks since he was roused from sleep at 2 a.m. October 9 by City Manager Sean McGlynn and asked to issue an emergency declaration.

“I’ve been talking to stressed people every day,” Coursey said in mid-November. “Some are depressed, others are yelling or crying. All of them have good and legitimate reasons for their responses, but we can’t deal with the 3,000 homes that were lost on a case-by-case basis if we’re going to get anywhere. I have to think of what’s best for the city as a whole.” eith Woods is a quick-witted, voluble spokesman for the local construction industry. In his time, he has seen market crashes send building activity into freefall and boomlets that translated to hundreds more high-paying jobs in the trades. But he has never seen anything like the landscape now facing contractors.

“The latest estimate I heard is that we’ll need 19,000 construction workers to do what needs to be done. And not only do we have to develop this workforce — we have to find places to house the workers. That’s going to be incredibly challenging, given the housing shortages we’re facing,” said Woods, CEO of the North Coast Builders Exchange, a trade group.

For those intent on rebuilding, “finding or choosing housing plans and hiring architects and contractors will take a lot of time and effort,” Woods said. Unlicensed contractors and potential scams are other perils, he said.

“If you can rebuild your home in less than 24 months you should pop some champagne and celebrate. For most people, it will take two to three years to rebuild, and for others, three to five years.”

In the Larkfield-Wikiup and Mark West area north of Santa Rosa, the challenge is plain to see. The Tubbs fire wiped out whole neighborhoods at Larkfield’s crossroads entrance after churning for miles along the area’s rural roadways to the east, claiming 1,500 homes in the sprawling Rincon Valley Fire District.

“It’s still horrible, having to see what the fires did here,” said Joanne Martensen, the owner of Bon Appetit Gift & Card at Larkfield Center. The little shopping complex escaped largely unscathed from the flames, but it’s surrounded by a wasteland of burned-out homes and apartment complexes.

“We were closed for 10 days during the fires, but people started coming in as soon as we opened back up,” Martensen said.

The store is one of many cherished shops and restaurants countywide that survived the flames, offering residents a gathering place to reestablish routines and connections that lie at the heart of civic life, that speak of community and continuity.

“My customers tend to be very local. We know them, they know us,” said Martensen. “People want to talk about their experiences, but they also want to see if we still carry items they bought for their old homes, so they can have them when they rebuild. More than one customer told me they just wanted to come in because this was their happy place, they feel at home here. It’s familiar. It gets very emotional at times, but it feels good, it feels that we’re all in this together.” similar atmosphere of solidarity prevails in the Sonoma Valley, where the Nuns fire scorched more than 500 homes.

“When we finally opened up on a Monday almost two weeks after the fires started, we had a limited menu,” said Kristopher Dalton, the general manager of Glen Ellen Star, one of the valley’s most popular restaurants. “But the response was overwhelming. Every seat was filled by 6 that first night. Once people discovered that we were going to reopen, they showed up in force. They wanted to support us, and they wanted to be with each other.”

Sia Patel, who owns the small and elegant Olea Hotel in Glen Ellen with her husband, Ashish Patel, agrees with Dalton that people in valley are mutually supportive and remain generally upbeat. Though the hotel sustained partial damage and is closed, Patel said she is grateful that her home was spared. As for when the couple will reopen the Olea — that’s still up in the air.

“The whole hillside behind us burned,” Patel said. “It’s not our property, and we’re not sure who will pay for the cleanup, or when it will occur. In fact, almost everything around us burned, and that’s sure to have a negative effect on business, at least in the short term. The visual impacts are real, and there’s going to be a lot of noisy construction for quite a while.”

Patel’s intimations are no doubt correct. Sonoma County as a whole will endure years of inconvenience, dust, detours and stress as it rebuilds. But just as there was a frightening implacability to the fires, there seems to be an inevitability to the reconstruction.

“I have no doubt the county will come back better and stronger,” Witt said.

In time, the Patels will repair the Olea Hotel, and once again accommodate guests touring the wineries and restaurants of the Sonoma Valley. For now, they’re counting their blessings, not their woes.

“We have our home, the hotel came through mostly intact, and we’re part of a fantastic community,” said Sia Patel. “We’re looking forward to the spring grass and flowers.”

19 Best Sonoma Wineries to Visit this Winter

January 2018

By Jean Saylor Doppenberg

Winter in Wine Country means less crowded rural roads and bright-yellow mustard blossoms starting to unfurl in the vineyards. After ringing in a new year, many wineries see fewer visitors and can offer more personal attention — and, in some cases, significant discounts on wine purchases. Click through the gallery above for local tasting rooms for the post-holiday season. Always call ahead or check websites for the latest information. (Tasting prices are per person.)

Lost Landmarks: Remembering Iconic Places Burned in Sonoma County Fires

January 2018

By Sonoma Magazine Staff

Among the untold losses from the North Bay wildfires are priceless cultural and historical landmarks. Santa Rosa’s Round Barn stood prominently on a hillside at the northern approach to the city for 118 years. Paradise Ridge Winery, for nearly a generation, has been one of Santa Rosa’s most cherished gathering spots for the arts and celebrations. Bouverie Audubon Preserve in Glen Ellen is a nature sanctuary and learning center, with historical and important literary connections. And for 70 years, Cloverleaf Ranch was an idyllic summer camp for kids, a riding and boarding stable and rustic events venue — an equestrian haven a short trot north of the Santa Rosa city limits. They are all compelling symbols of our identity, our community and shared heritage.

Guests enjoy wine and music as the sun sets at Paradise Ridge Winery in Santa Rosa, California, on Wednesday, August 9, 2017. (Alvin Jornada / The Press Democrat) — Guests enjoy wine and music as the sun sets at Paradise Ridge Winery in Santa Rosa, California, on Wednesday, August 9, 2017. (Photo by Alvin Jornada)

Paradise Ridge Winery, Santa Rosa

Walter Byck, who founded Paradise Ridge Winery in 1978 with his late wife, Marijke Byck, was in Denmark on October 9 when the Tubbs fire destroyed the main winery building he had set on an idyllic ridge looking over the Russian River Valley in northeast Santa Rosa.

Winery caretaker Fernando Marquez, who lives nearby, and winemaker Dan Barwick of Healdsburg both rushed to the property, but the roads were already clogged with people trying to evacuate.

“Fernando finally got to the property and opened the gates, and the firetrucks drove up and drove out,” says co-owner Sonia Byck-Barwick. “Within five minutes after that, he took a couple of pictures of the fire coming over the hill, and the front gate had flames 30 or 40 feet high.”

For Byck-Barwick, the biggest emotional loss was the exhibit housed inside the winery that honored Japanese wine pioneer Kanaye Nagasawa of the original Fountain Grove Winery.

“The sword, the Samurai outfit and his tuxedo — it’s all gone,” she says. “And it’s irreplaceable.”

But Byck, who has been a generous patron of the arts and of the community, has obviously generated good karma over the years. All the sculptures on display outdoors at the winery, including permanent works by local artists Bruce Johnson, David Best and the late Robert Ellison, as well as 10 pieces on display in Marijke’s Grove, came through virtually unscathed.

“When we walked the property, it was kind of mind-boggling,” Byck-Barwick says. “It’s amazing that we can’t see any lost art at this point.”

Miraculously, the 15 acres of vineyards planted in front of the winery also escaped the fire’s fury, which means the winery will be able to produce a vintage next year.

“The fences are burned all the way around the vineyard, but the vineyard pretty much looks perfect,” Byck-Barwick says. “That would have been an incredible loss for us.”

The winery, which was voted Best Tasting Room in California by USA Today in 2016, has also gained fame as a wedding venue, which inspired Byck to purchase a large steel sculpture of the words “LOVE” by artist Laura Kimpton of Fairfax.

Now a photograph taken by a family member of the surviving “LOVE” sculpture, surrounded by smoke, is making the rounds of social media as a powerful symbol of resilience.

“It is a beacon of hope for Sonoma County,” Byck-Barwick says. “The high schoolers all have it on their Snapchat pages.”

Communications director Barbara Harris of the Voigt Family Sculpture Foundation, which has curated the winery’s sculpture exhibits for the past five years, says that the “LOVE” sculpture is a perfect example of how art speaks a universal language.

“In the midst of tragedy and devastation and loss, it still touches people’s lives,” she says.

Sonoma Coast artist Bruce Johnson, who lost six out of 16 largescale redwood sculptures at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts as a result of the same fire, was one of the first sculptors to exhibit at Paradise Ridge Winery more than 20 years ago.

“It’s a loss because it’s a vital, lively venue,” he says. “Walter built a performance space there, and there was a shed he used as a small gallery … and he opened up an area for several artists working in wood.”

The winery has been hosting a Wines and Sunsets event on Wednesday evenings since it opened, and Byck hopes to hold the popular music and food gathering this year at the outdoor performance venue while he rebuilds the winery. He also plans to use the wall space inside of the winery, which once told the story of Nagasawa, to tell a new story: about the fire and the rebuilding of Sonoma County.

“My dad said we’re going to use that wall for the fire because that’s the new history of Sonoma County,” Byck-Barwick says. “He wants to keep moving forward.”

– Diane Peterson

New owners plan to fix up the old Round Barn at Fountaingrove. — The historic Fountaingrove Round Barn stood above Santa Rosa for 118 years. (Photo by Mark Aronoff)

Round Barn, Santa Rosa

Kanaye Nagasawa, the exotic Japanese winemaker at Fountain Grove Winery, gets credit for “building” the familiar Round Barn that guarded the northern gateway to Santa Rosa for 118 years.

It was, in fact, Nagasawa who hired carpenter John Lindsay in 1899. But the plans he handed him came directly from Thomas Lake Harris, the founder of the Fountaingrove Utopian Community — the “Father and Pivot and Primate and King” of the Brotherhood of the New Life.

Harris had been gone from his Santa Rosa “Eden” for nearly a decade when he ordered the new barn, an example of a popular turn-of-the-century architectural style. Harris was a “student” of unique architecture, believing that he was building the Fountaingrove complex to be taken directly into the “Celestial Sphere” when the end came.

In Gay Nineties Santa Rosa, there was already a classic round barn near the railroad housing Isaac DeTurk’s valuable trotting horses. Through the years, these two buildings brought the town some architectural attention, because most of the round barns were in the Midwest and, so far as can be determined, Santa Rosa was the only town with two.

They were the subjects of good-natured banter among the townspeople, particularly those who might have gathered at the Senate Saloon to exchange witticisms. A favorite, dutifully recorded by scribes of the day, was about the tramp who walked to death looking for a corner in which to relieve himself.

The DeTurk round barn, 20 years older and built of sturdier stuff, was purchased by the city in 1910 and served as the municipal corporation yard for 70 years. It has recently been restored and is a popular venue for civic events.

No such luck for the more rough-hewn Fountaingrove barn. Since the Fountaingrove Ranch was sold in the 1970s, no cattle or horses have fed in a circle on hay tossed from the loft above into one big heap. It sat empty, except for the owls, and pigeons and an occasional transient.

TMI, a teachers’ investment group that was the first of several would-be developers of the ranch, put a bronze plaque near the entrance in memory of Nagasawa. And each new owner, in turn, tried to interest the city in buying it. But it was, let’s face it, just a barn, with single-wall construction that let the air and light and the wind and the rain in between the old boards. It was generally agreed that the public could not be allowed in unless a whole new inner structure was built. So the city said, more than once, “Thank you, but no thank you.”

Ultimately it became the property of the owners of the Hilton Hotel next door, a hostelry that was originally the “Sheraton Round Barn Inn.” But only for a few years.

What it lacked in respect, it made up for in the hearts and minds of Santa Rosans. It was a way to give directions; a unique landmark for motorists, particularly when the Redwood Highway that passed beneath it didn’t have “Old” in its name. There have been numerous attempts of “do something” with the barn, the last one, in 1999, being an abortive effort by a German couple to turn it into a brewpub.

— Gaye LeBaron

12/27/2009: B6: PC: Jim Moir, volunteer docent at the Bouverie Preserve near Glen Ellen, waits next to an egret sculpture to lead hikers through the 500-acre preserve to learn about the plants, animals and habitat of the area. The retired Agilent and Hewlett-Packard engineer is one of about 130 hike leaders at the preserve. — Back in 2009, volunteer docent Jim Moir waits for a group of hikers next to an egret sculpture at the Bouverie Preserve in Glen Ellen. (Photo by Mark Aronoff)

Bouverie Audubon Preserve, Glen Ellen

The Bouverie Audubon Preserve, a sanctuary for plants and wildlife set against a flank of the Mayacamas Mountains in Glen Ellen, lost every building and bit of infrastructure when the Nuns fire ripped through the upper Sonoma Valley.

It’s a profound loss for the nonprofit refuge, run by the Audubon Canyon Ranch as a preserve and educational center for schoolchildren and the community. But thanks to the unrelenting efforts of a 28-yearold employee, the historic home of founder and British-born aristocrat David Pleydell-Bouverie, filled with precious antiques, including a letter from George Washington, was spared.

And when the flames died down and the sun rose through a red haze on Monday morning, the famed “Last House” of internationally known author M.F.K. Fisher, who spent her final 21 years on the preserve, also was miraculously still standing.

“She would be so pleased it survived, not because it was her house, but

because it’s a place that can serve as a springboard for Bouverie to come back to life,” says Kennedy Golden, Fisher’s daughter. “It’s going to take time and it’s going to take money, but I’m deeply grateful David’s house and Last House survived.”

She called the forested preserve, once home to more than 130 species of birds, as well as wildflowers and large animals from bobcats to bears, “a beacon of specialness.”

Fresh from a summer spent with a “hot shot” crew out of Redding fighting wildfires, Sasha Berleman, a recently hired fire ecologist for Audubon Canyon Ranch, arrived at the preserve in the middle of the night just after the worst of the damage was done, to see what she could save.

Virtually everything was gone, including Gilman Hall, a beautiful converted barn and educational center filled with art of the flora and fauna of the preserve. Bouverie, who was an architect, designed the barn, with its distinctive end arches and swoopy roof.

Bouverie’s home was still standing but had started to burn. Aided by a retired Cal Fire training chief and a neighbor, she toiled through the night to keep the fire from taking the house, parts of which date back to the 19th century. They knocked down an arbor connecting the house to a burning guesthouse and formed a bucket brigade to douse flames with water from a swimming pool.

Anticipating potential fires, Berleman had ordered a controlled burn on the property earlier last summer, leaving little to burn and threaten Fisher’s small adobe-style home in the middle of a pasture visible from Highway 12. Berleman spent

a fitful night camping on the grounds and putting out spot fires around Fisher’s house, which contained keepsakes, like her typewriter, that had recently been returned to the cottage as part of an ongoing push to restore the house. Author of books like “The Art of Eating” and “How to Cook a Wolf,” Fisher wrote 13 books at Last House before her death in 1992.

The great poet W.H. Auden called Fisher, whose prose was as lush as the food, places and experiences that inspired her writing, “America’s greatest writer.” She broke bread with people like Maya Angelou, Julia Child and Bill Moyers at Last House, which her friend David Bouverie built for her in 1971.

Wendy Coy, a spokeswoman for the preserve, said soon after the fire that Bouverie’s staff and volunteers were both heartsick and heartened. There were signs of wildlife, everything from tiny voles to pings from tagged mountain lions on the other side of the valley. A stone belltower Bouverie had built is still standing. So is a sculpture of a great egret, with wings outstretched, that stood outside Gilman Hall.

“One of its wings is melted metal,” said Coy. “But we look at it and we immediately think, ‘That’s our phoenix.’”

— Meg McConahey

5/12/2013: T8: Ginger DeGrange, from left, on horse Hank; Shawna DeGrange on Bill; and Rob DeGrange on Arnie at Cloverleaf Ranch in Santa Rosa PC: Shawna DeGrange, center, on Bill, with her parents Ginger DeGrange, left, on Hank and Ron DeGrange, right, on Arnie, at Cloverleaf Ranch in Santa Rosa, Wednesday, May 8, 2013. (Crista Jeremiason / The Press Democrat) — Ginger DeGrange, from left, on horse Hank; Shawna DeGrange on Bill; and Rob DeGrange on Arnie at Cloverleaf Ranch in Santa Rosa, May 8, 2013. (Photo by Crista Jeremiason)

Cloverleaf Ranch, Santa Rosa

Asked where she lives, Shawna De-Grange has for years been prone to answer, “Heaven.”

DeGrange has never taken for granted the gift of having grown up and spent most of her 35 years on the 160-acre horse ranch and idyllic summer camp for kids that rises from Old Redwood Highway just north of the city limits to well up the western flank of Fountaingrove. She stands in reverent awe of Cloverleaf Ranch, founded by her late grandparents 70 years ago and passed to her by her parents in 2010. These days, she beholds as well the enormity of the task to rebuild it.

“Everything’s just melted,” De-Grange says of the ruins left by the Tubbs fire. What hurts most is the destruction of her parents’ home and the ranch’s two great Civil War-era redwood barns, and the deaths of two horses.

Just as she might direct a mount while riding, DeGrange nudges herself to stay on the bright side.

“I’m trying to take it one step at a time and be grateful,” says the 2000 graduate of the former Ursuline High School, located just up Old Redwood Highway.

DeGrange was taking a respite on Maui when the fire roared down from Fountaingrove before dawn on October 9, devouring the nearby Hilton Sonoma Wine Country hotel and the Fountaingrove Inn, then leaping west to the Coffey Park neighborhood. For a time that morning, as she spoke by phone with key Cloverleaf staffer Shayla Wilson, she feared her mother, Ginger DeGrange, had died in the fire.

But Ginger, a renowned Sonoma County equestrian who also grew up on the ranch and for more than 30 years owned and operated it with her husband, Ron, emerged almost untouched. She and Wilson and some angels with horse trailers rounded up and safely moved more than 30 family-owned and boarded horses.

Ginger, who credits Wilson with awakening and saving her and Ron, was on the ranch also for the Hanly fire of 1964, which threatened but didn’t damage Cloverleaf. She says the firestorm of October 9 was a different animal.

“It was coming so fast,” she says. “I have never seen wind like this.”

Though the flames destroyed her house, daughter Shawna’s mobile home, the barns, the camp kitchen, zip line, tack shed, trading post and several other structures and amenities, including some of the camp bunkhouses, it missed a few buildings and the classic Foley & Burke Circus wagons long ago converted to sleeping quarters.

Shawna says with a look of irony, “The (stacked-full) hay barn was left standing, which is wild.”

She and her mother have said separately the most emotional aspect of the fire has been the community response. In addition to all who helped move and board the horses, friends and strangers and former Cloverleaf Ranch campers across the nation and overseas have sent messages of love and support, and offered to help with the reconstruction.

“It’s about the village,” Ginger says. “The blessings have been just unbelievable.”

A crowdfunding appeal for help to rebuild Cloverleaf Ranch has attracted donations of more than $40,000. A second one for Shayla Wilson, who lost everything when the fire burned her unit at the ranch, has received more than $3,000.

More than 100 people have said that when the time comes to go to work creating the new Cloverleaf, they’ll be there.

As heartbreaking as it is for Shawna to walk about the remains of the ranch, being there also helps her accept the reality and extent of the loss. And already she’s pondering what she wants to build, and where.

“The more I’m here, the more it’s helping with the healing,” she says.

A doer who has run Cloverleaf since age 28, she aspires to welcome back campers, as usual, next summer.

— Chris Smith

Sonoma Fires: Hope Amid the Ruins in Valley of the Moon

January 2018

By Meg McConahey

A metal scultpure of an egret remains at the Bouverie Preserve in Glen Ellen. (Photo by John Burgess)

Those used to gazing up at the deeply forested mountains framing the Valley of the Moon now look to the east in shock. The Nuns Fire that blowtorched through the upper Sonoma Valley at the end of harvest has transfigured the multimillion dollar views that inspired writers like Jack London and made it one of the most prized destinations in Wine Country.

The firestorm vandalized the landscape, scorching hillsides and leaving haunting bald patches that look like iron burns.

Hummocks, once green and now the color of shale, rise denuded above vineyards. Stands of oak and other deciduous trees still standing wear crowns of brittle burned leaves. Many evergreens are now brown.

More heartrending are the ashen homesites eerily strung like Pompeian ruins along Warm Springs Road and Highway 12, and tucked back on country lanes between Kenwood and Glen Ellen. The loss of some 500 homes in the Sonoma Valley broke up tight-knit neighborhoods and placed a massive strain on a community already shy of affordable housing.

But there are signs of life. With the first fall rains, grass shoots poked through the blackened fields, repainting the landscape as nature began the inevitable process of reparation.

And that has given residents and businesses grieving lost homes and property, and the sight of burned ridge lines, reason to believe that the valley’s scars will eventually fade.

“The contrast between these lush, brilliant green juicy sprouts and the dead black ash on the ground surface is inspiring,” said Caitlin Cornwall, a biologist and research program manager for the Sonoma Ecology Center. Flames came within 100 feet of their offices at Sonoma Developmental Center.

“On one hand it’s very much a visceral, human disaster. We all know people who have lost their homes and just being on these burn sites is shocking,” she lamented. “The smell is bad. There are toxics in the ashes and debris left behind. And it’s been a big hit to the public in terms of the economy and their routines. A lot of us were evacuated and stressed out. But on the other hand, we all know the land has been waiting for and wanting and needing fire ever since European settlers stopped the regular Indian burning that the land is used to.”

Tensions Tamed

Before the fires, as another harvest launched in September, the valley’s biggest challenge centered on the pace of growth in the wine industry, the strain of increasing traffic along the storied Valley of the Moon Scenic Route and the loss of residential housing to vacation rentals for tourists flocking from around the world to take in the region’s charms.

But that seems like another lifetime. While there has been an increase in utility and construction trucks for cleanup and rebuilding, those who depend on the wine economy now worry that tourism will drop. Despite the fact that none of the valley’s wineries suffered major damage, the images of smoke and flame that played out in the national media for weeks are seared into the minds of many people.

“Traffic is down at all of our locations,” said Josie Gay, head of the Heart of the Valley Association, which markets 29 wineries between Kenwood and Glen Ellen.

“The general misconception out there is that everything is destroyed,” said Steve Ledson, whose Gothic “castle” winery barely escaped the inferno. “People are calling and asking, ‘What is the landscape like? I don’t think I can bear to see the destruction.’” He acknowledged the widespread perception that Sonoma Valley “is not a fun place where anyone would want to go on vacation.”

The number of visitors to his Kenwood winery, as well as his hotel and restaurant on the Sonoma Plaza, are down. Damage to vineyards with fruit still on the vine will amount to millions in losses, he added. He said he already has cut the number of wine club events from six to two for 2018 and has all but halted the weddings that were a signature of his winery.

One Glen Ellen resident reflected that a silver lining in the tragedy is that it provided a timeout to the mounting tensions over growth in the tourism industry and the quality of small town, rural life cherished by residents.

“Certainly I wouldn’t want this to happen to anybody but it does make everyone step back a little. I know a lot of people taking VRBO’s off the market and now renting them full-time so people have places to live.”

Ledson was one of them. He said he made two of his vacation rentals available long term to residents.

“In times like this you’ve got to be helping each other,” said Ledson, who before the fire had dropped plans for a new 50,000-case winery off Highway 12 on Frey Road in Kenwood. He added he now plans to make the 18 new homes he’s building on West Spain Street in Sonoma, available as rentals to ease the shortage.

Recovering

As the new year begins, valley residents are showing grit and not giving in to their losses.

Chris and Sofie Dolan spent more than five years turning 10 acres along Highway 12 into the picturesque Flatbed Farm. Their country home and pool house was spared but a 7,200-square-foot barn designed by noted Wine Country architect Howard Backen is in ruins along with fencing and infrastructure.

“To see it in its current state is pretty emotional,” Chris Dolan conceded. “For us and the community it was much more than a barn.” It was, he said, a community gathering spot, and the centerpiece of their business. But he said they’re moving ahead with plans to rebuild and are looking forward to spring, using their vintage truck as a mobile produce stand.

“We won’t have a barn but we’ll be planting our spring crops and taking inventory of what survived in our orchard,” he vowed.

Farther up the highway, Rebecca and Gary Rosenberg also plan to rebuild and replant their lavender farm in Kenwood. Barely a trace of the bucolic spot remains next to Chateau St. Jean Winery where they raised their family along with fragrant fields of purple lavender. They’ve taken emotional refuge for the time being in a temporary rental in San Diego, until initial shock wears away in the valley. But they, too, remain optimistic.

“The character of Sonoma will not change,” Gary said. “The whole community is getting closer and neighbors are cooperating on the fenceline. There’s going to be a wonderful sense of pride. The wineries will always attract people and the natural beauty will be back.”

Bouverie Preserve

When Sasha Berleman surveys the scorched wildlands of Glen Ellen’s Bouverie Audubon Preserve, she doesn’t see devastation, but renewal. The 28-year-old fire ecologist worked through the night of the firestorm with two others to save the historic homes of David Bouverie and writer M.F.K. Fisher. Virtually every other structure on the 535-acre preserve burned to the ground, including a historic barn that served as an educational center.

The fire, she lamented, was “absolutely a human disaster.” But the effect on the landscape is not catastrophic.

Come spring, the fire will deliver an unexpected gift. Fire poppies, which need wildfire to germinate, will paint the meadows. Non-native grasses that suppressed other wildflowers have been burned off, clearing the way for a breathtaking wildflower bloom. The spring will be lush and green.

“This all has a silver lining for me,” she said, “knowing that in a lot of ways, the fire benefited our very loved open space. So even in the face of all the human suffering, you can look to spring and know there is going to be this incredible rebirth process we can all witness and lean on, as a vision of hope in the future.”

Forgotten Fire Victims: Farmworkers and Day Laborers Face Harsh Reality After Fires

January 2018

By John Beck

“I sleep where I fall,” said Salvador with a weary smile one early evening during the October fires.

He was standing in the doorway of La Luz Center in Sonoma after eating a free dinner of pasta and salad. At dusk, the smoke had lifted for a brighter sunset than the hazy days before. Families came and went around him, carrying free supplies — diapers, canned food and bottled water.

Too embarrassed to go to a shelter, Salvador had been living out of his car for the eight days since the fires started in Sonoma and Napa counties.

“Thank God we have La Luz,” he said. “Here we can eat, thanks to God. This is like home.”

Behind him, mulling over their meal in the dining hall, Glafira and Rodrigo were weighing their next move.

“Three nights ago we were living in the car,” she said. Immediately after the house they were renting in Santa Rosa burned in the Tubbs fire, they lived out of an SUV with their three children — daughters 6-year-old Joatsi and 3-year-old Jade and 8-month-old son Gael. Glafira cleans houses for a living, but the houses of her clients had been destroyed in the fires. Now, they were living in Rodrigo’s mother’s living room.

Along with Salvador and countless others, they are the often forgotten fire victims — those who cleaned the houses that went up in flames, who worked the land that burned, who cooked the food and made the beds in restaurants and hotels that no longer exist — many of whom may never qualify for federal aid because they’re undocumented.

They were living day to day before the fires, and now they’re looking for their next paycheck. The people who landscaped the lawns of those vanished hillside homes are among those wondering how they will pay next month’s rent or move into a new apartment.

For many, La Luz, a community nonprofi t focused on the needs of Mexican immigrants, has been the last resort. “We don’t ask if they’re documented or not —they need the service and we provide the service,” says La Luz board president Marcelo Defreitas, who helped his staff serve free lunches and dinners every day during the fires and after. By early December, they had served 2,000 hot meals to more than 500 families, donated 5 tons of supplies (diapers, clothing and canned goods) and helped more than 250 families with rent assistance totaling over $400,000. By Jan. 15, La Luz is required to spend all of the $750,000 passed on by Redwood Credit Union to the La Luz fund to help with fire victims.

Earlier that same day in October, as more than a hundred people lined up at the weekly free Food Pantry at St. Leo’s Catholic Church in Sonoma, Father James Fredericks explained, “At first there’s fire, OK, but we don’t think about going for days and even weeks afterwards. There’s one complication after another.”

That afternoon at First Congregational Church in Santa Rosa, Augustin, his wife and three children met with Davin Cardenas at North Bay Organizing Project, which has joined with other Sonoma County grassroots organizations to start UndocuFund to raise money for undocumented fire victims.

“My concern is we’re not going to get enough help,” said Augustin, his children sitting at his feet. His family barely escaped their house on Riebli Road before it burned. A carpenter by trade, he hadn’t worked for weeks.

“It’s hard to think, I don’t have nothing,” he said, holding his wife’s hand. “And I don’t have a job. And I don’t know where to start again.”

Turning a Corner

Two weeks later, Glafira returned to La Luz with her daughter Jade for a 10 a.m. appointment with her case manager. Her husband Rodrigo stayed outside in the SUV with their son and older daughter.

“We decided not to go back to our house because we knew there was nothing there,” she said, waiting in the crowded lobby with several other families.

After meeting with Defreitas and case manager Veronica Vences, Glafira received a check for $1,920 to pay for the first month’s rent on a new apartment in Agua Caliente.

“It’s a start,” said Defreitas, giving her a phone number for a woman in Sonoma who needed house-cleaning help, as well as his cellphone number in case she had any questions. He explained that La Luz will likely help out with the following month’s rent, too.

“We’ll see where you are in a month — if you have jobs or not.”

Outside, beside the SUV they once called home, Glafira gave her husband a big hug and told him the good news. Soon they would drive to Petaluma where he was applying for a job at Petaluma Poultry. But first she smiled a smile that had been missing for weeks.

“It’s nice to have hope again,” she said. “It feels good.”

Guided February Hike Offers Glimpse at Nature’s Renewal after Fires

January 2018

By Nate Seltenrich

LandPaths will lead a hike along with fire ecologist Sasha Berleman and biologist Peter Leveque through a 72-acre property off Calistoga Rd. that was burned by the Tubbs Fire. (Photo by John Burgess)

Fire destroys, and fire creates. At least that’s true in the parks and wildlands of Sonoma County affected by last fall’s fires. Native plants that evolved for millennia with frequent lowintensity burns aren’t merely equipped to overcome fire. Often, they require it.

Coast live oak trees are considered fire resistors because their evergreen leaves, thick bark and vigorous sprouting allow all but the youngest specimens to survive and recover quickly. Meanwhile, many species of the chaparral shrub Ceanothus, commonly known as California lilac or soap bush, have leaves coated with highly flammable resins and seeds that germinate only under intense heat.

Rare is the opportunity to witness this ecological magic in our own backyard, however, as landmanagement practices and development along the urban-wildland interface — not just here but throughout the West — have resulted in less frequent, more severe wildfires.

To help offer insight into fire’s role in the landscape, Santa Rosa-based conservation group LandPaths will host an intimate, guided walk of one of its preserves in eastern Sonoma County in February. The 72-acre property off Calistoga Road saw spotty, low-intensity burning in October, leaving a checkerboard of greenery and charred ground rich with educational opportunities.

Five weeks after the fire, smoke wafted from holes in the earth as roots slowly smoldered underground, and the first green shoots of winter emerged from the soil where fire hadn’t touched.

By late February even the burned, blackened patches should be blanketed in green, says fire ecologist Sasha Berleman, one of two leaders of the 3-mile hike, which culminates with stunning ridgetop views of Fountaingrove, Sebastopol and beyond. She’ll be joined by esteemed Sonoma County field biologist Peter Leveque.

“In burn areas we’ll expect to see a bit of ferns and irises and soap root popping up, so that’ll be lots of fun,” Berleman says. “And some madrone will probably be here, too.” The ancient process of renewal is underway.

Saturday, February 24, 1 to 4 p.m. Advance registration is free but required, due to limited capacity, at landpaths.org. Exact location and additional details will be provided to registered participants approximately five days before the hike.

Fire & Wine: How Sonoma’s Winemaking Community Survived Its Toughest Test

January 2018

By Linda Murphy

Helicopters drop water on a fire on the flanks of Hood Mountain above Leson Winery in the Sonoma Valley on October 14, 2017. (Photo by John Burgess)

To the rest of the world, it briefly appeared that Sonoma’s wine industry had gone up in smoke. Heart-stopping images of a demolished Paradise Ridge Winery in Santa Rosa, video of air tankers dropping retardant on flames raging on the hillside behind Ledson Winery & Vineyards in Kenwood, and early reports that Gundlach Bundschu Winery in Sonoma, one of California’s oldest, had been destroyed, gave outsiders an ominous impression.

But ultimately, surprisingly few Sonoma wineries suffered significant damage when the catastrophic fires ripped through the region in October.

And the local winemaking community begins a new year resolute in their intention to continue honing their craft, to put their talents to work for fire victims and rebuilding efforts, and to make sure the world is well aware that Sonoma is open for business.

The industry did not emergefrom the firestorm unscathed;most notably, the Byck family’s Paradise Ridge buildings were destroyed. But their 15-acre vineyard and metal art sculptures remained intact. Firebreaks and aerial strikes saved Ledson and several otherHighway 12 wineries, and within days of the fires, Jeff Bundschu, president of “Gun Bun,” was enthusiastically welcoming visitors to the winery, tales of its demise proving false (though his parents, Jim and Nancy, lost the family home on the property).

Jeff Kunde evacuated family, horses and dogs from Oakmont to his Kenwood winery, Kunde Family Winery, and hunkered there for nine days. He knew if he left, he wouldn’t be allowed back in.

Family and staff slept in the tasting room, and winemaker Zach Long took advantage of a generator installed in 2016 to keep the fermentations, and the business, going.

Kunde grilled meat from the winery freezer and cooked farm eggs on foil to feed the troops. “It was surreal,” he says, “eating steak and eggs and drinking wine from our cellar, as fire crews battled the flames all around us. Helicopters were a constant, the pilots using our irrigation reservoirs for firefighting.

“It was a fateful decision for me to evacuate to the winery and not Santa Rosa. We saved ourharvest.” A few Kunde vineyard blocks were singed, but as with most Sonoma vineyards, the majority of grapes had alreadybeen harvested — 90 percent, according to Sonoma County Winegrowers president Karissa Kruse — at the time of the fires.

More positive news: The Russian River Valley, Dry Creek Valley and Petaluma Gap wine regions were largely unaffected by the fires, except for smoky skies and evacuation advisories that never became mandatory. Northern Alexander Valley had a few scares, east of Cloverdale and Geyserville, but firefighters kept flames away from homes and wineries.

Vineyards as Firebreaks

An early November drive on Highway 12 from eastern Santa Rosa through Glen Ellen showed scorched hillsides, intact wineries and startlingly alive, green-leafed vines, with only a few rows burned. “Grapevines play a fantastic role in slowing down fires,” explains Santa Rosa’s Rhonda J. Smith, viticulture farm advisor for UC Cooperative Extension.

“There typically is a lack of fuel load in a vineyard, compared to structures and landscaping. Most growers had mowed their vineyard rows down to a stubble after the June rains, leaving no easy fuel for the flames.”

Paradise Ridge co-owner Rene Byck says he will rebuild his Fountaingrove winery, known for its breathtaking views and art installations. He takes heart from the fact that the estate vineyards survived, bottled wines were secure in a warehouse, and that wine sales continue at a satellite tasting room in Kenwood.

On Sonoma Mountain, Bettina Sichel of Laurel Glen Vineyard lost one acre of Cabernet Sauvignon vines to flames, although she found an upside.

“Those vines were planted in the 1970s and suffered from eutypa, a trunk disease,” she says. “We were getting just one ton of grapes from that block and were scheduled to replace the vines at some point. Mother Nature speeded things up for us.”

Sichel and her husband, Brian Dickson, and their two children lost their Soda Canyon home to the Atlas Fire in Napa Valley. She marvels that most of her Sonoma vineyard was saved, and that the

Laurel Glen tasting room in downtown Glen Ellen also escaped damage.

She rues, however, “losing two weeks of the biggest tourism month of the year” while her tasting room was closed. “That’s a cash hole we’ll have to fill.”

That’s a concern shared by many others in the Sonoma wine industry — and the county as a whole. A study commissioned by Sonoma County Winegrowers and Sonoma County Vintners, released in 2014, found that grape-growing, winemaking and related businesses contributed $13.4 billion to the local economy — nearly two-thirds of the county’s gross product.

“If I had just one thing I’d like you to write, it’s that Sonoma remains open for business,” Kunde said in November. “The biggest impact of the fires on us is that people aren’t coming. We’ve had parties cancel their trips. But look around our property and you wouldn’t knowwe had a major fire here a month ago.”

Vintage 2017 in Sonoma is truly “the harvest from hell,” a phrase commonly used in the wine business for difficult years. Yet Kunde remains astonished at how relatively little physical damage was done to his grapevines, his wines and other wineries.

“We have remarkable firefighting efforts to thank,” he says. “And we met neighbors, people we didn’t know before. One woman evacuated from her home wandered in and ended up helping us soak oak barrels so they wouldn’t burn. We made new friends. And the generator I bought last year, which kept the winemaking going for nine days before electricity was restored? I actually got it for fire protection. But it ended up saving our bacon for winemaking, providing the power we needed.”

Fundraising Kicks In

Winery people have always known how to throw a good party for a great cause, and the fires brought out the best in them.

Hamel Family Wines in Glen Ellen, which was threatened by flames on three sides but survived major damage, hosted a concert by Rock & Roll Hall of Famer John Fogarty, raising $1.2 million for fire victims relief. Kelly and Noah Dorrance, owners of Reeve Wines in Dry Creek Valley, raised more than $222,000 in a drawing for vacation stays in Healdsburg, Laguna Beach and Hawaii.

E. & J. Gallo Winery, which owns several North Coast brands — among them Sonoma’s J Vineyards & Winery and MacMurray Estate Vineyards — pledged $1 million, to be shared by the American Red Cross California Wildfires Relief Fund, Community Foundation of Sonoma and Napa Valley Community Foundation. Numerous wineries have waived tasting fees and offered discounts to fire victims, and have promised

percentages of sales to firerelated causes. The John Jordan Foundation and Jordan Winery, in Healdsburg, teamed to donate $25,000 to the Sonoma County Grape Growers Foundation to establish a housing recovery fund for farmworkers and their families displaced by the fires.

Says Noah Dorrance, “It’s been an amazing, heartening silver lining — but not surprising — that our community has rallied, that people are marshalling their resources to try to help out.”