Smoky grapes, scorched beef: ‘Agri-threats’ posed by west coast wildfires

If you like your wine to have a smoky flavour, having the grapes ripen in the midst of a raging wildfire is not how you get it.

The Okanagan region of southern British Columbia once again is threatened by fires racing through the tinder-dry forests near the postcard-pretty lake shore. Some of the area’s flourishing wineries are getting ready to again protect their vineyards and buildings.

It’s just one of the sectors of B.C.’s agriculture industry that has to worry about wildfires, whose damaging effects aren’t limited to blackened strands of timber. Cattle ranchers, pork and chicken operators and orchard-fruit growers can all find themselves scrambling if fire threatens to encroach on them.

Memories of 2003’s Summer of Fire aren’t buried very deeply around Okanagan Lake. That year, the Okanagan Mountain Park fire ate into the grapevines at Oak Bay Vineyards and destroyed the first winery building at adjacent St. Hubertus Estate winery, as well as co-founder Leo Gebert’s home.

“It was literally a direct hit with the fire going at that time through the vineyard and taking out my brother’s house and the original winery,” younger brother Andy Gebert recalls in an interview.

This year’s fires aren’t threatening St. Hubertus and Oak Bay, so far. But as Gebert pointed out, the fire season is less than half over.

You’d forgive Grant Stanley, though, if he felt a little more nervous. This year’s blaze is visible from the winemaker’s 50th Parallel Estate property.

“We’re getting a great view of it from across the lake,” he told Yahoo Canada this week. “It’s highly entertaining in the evenings and even in the daytime with planes flying all over the place and the buzz of fire activity.”

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Lest anyone think being separated from a fire by a body of water is complete protection, air convection can carry burning embers for a kilometre or more, dropping them in untouched areas, like the advance guard of an attacking army.

“We’re certainly watching very closely and hope they get things under control there across the lake and we don’t end up with a crazy year,” Gebert said.

The late-summer, lightning-sparked 2003 blaze, which caused the evacuation of about 27,000 people in the Kelowna area and burned 239 homes, didn’t just create fire damage. The thick smoke that lingered in the valley tainted the grapes in nearby vineyards, making them unusable for wine-making, or anything else for that matter.

“It basically stops the ripening process because you end up clouding out photosynthesis,” Stanley explained. “And if it gets too severe at colour, at veraison (onset of ripening), when the grapes start getting colour and putting on sugar, the skins have the potential to bring smoke and the compounds for ethylphenol into their system.”

Fire smoke no substitute for French oak barrels

Winemakers joked they could save themselves thousands of dollars used to buy French oak barrels that give some wines their smoky vanilla flavour, he said.

“We could just rely on our wood smoke,” he said. “But unfortunately the wines don’t actually have a nice smoky character, they end up tasting like an ash tray.”

Stanley said a winemaker at Cedar Creek Estates tried using reverse osmosis filtering to clean up the wine and make it drinkable, but without success. While it might have been possible to salvage it to distill out the alcohol, most of those affected just destroyed the batches and wrote off the loss.

“The only insurance that we have is for the crop itself,” said Stanley. “It doesn’t cover finished wine.”

Manfred Freese, president of the B.C. Grape Growers’ Association, said tons of grapes were discarded and “there was a lot of pinot noir [that] went down the drain.

“There were some significant losses and they were not covered by production insurance.”

This year’s fire likely won’t create the same problems, he said. Winds are blowing the smoke out of the valley and it’s much earlier in the grape ripening process to have an impact.

Vineyard fires are not unheard of in places like Australia and California, especially when conditions are parched, Gebert said.

“We always say a good grape year is unfortunately a very good fire year,” he said. “It’s hot and dry and unfortunately this is one of those things that go hand in hand.”

But changing climactic conditions have meant the already hot Okanagan summers, which make it ideal for wine-making, have also heightened the conditions for wildfires in the neighbouring forests.

“I can tell you, having been making wine here for the last dozen years, that over the last five or six this has become the norm for us here,” said Stanley, adding people have come to live with the danger.

“We’re not as freaked out as we once were about forest fires in the Okanagan. Every year people are on evacuation alert and every year the same thing happens.”

Preparing for wildfires doesn’t guarantee protection

Vineyard operators take precautions, such as setting up irrigation systems to create buffers and that brush is cleared away from the perimeter of properties. But they thought they were ready the last time, said Gebert.

“Unfortunately with all the glowing embers the fire jumped so much faster, so much further, that we were getting hit very hard on it,” he said.

“Each time you see a fire or a lightning strike, it just gives you the shivers. Even though it’s over 10 years ago, it still affects you greatly. Fire sirens shortly after that (lightning) does not really help.”

The other sector that casts a sharp eye on the fire threat is B.C.’s cattle industry.

So far this year, wildfire have not had much impact on the Crown-owned and private range land that herds use for grazing, said Kevin Boon, general manager of the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association.

“We had some issues back in 2010,” he said. “We had some fairly big fires that encompassed quite a bit of our range land and those where quite hairy. Especially when the fire starts right where you’ve got the cattle at, you haven’t got a choice to try and get in there.”

The effects of fire on grassland and timbered areas where cattle also graze can be both immediate and longer-term.

Cattle that aren’t killed by fire may seek safety near a creek or river, which could prove a deadly haven.

“They may not burn to death but the smoke inhalation might kill them,” said Boon.

Even if they survive, walking back through the danger zone over still-scorching embers may cause unseen damage to hooves and the nerves of the feet.

“Then it creates problems during the winter with cold and stuff and you end up having to get rid of the cattle lots of times,” said Boon.

No predicting where dry lightning may spark a fire

Dry lightning is the main cause for most range-land fires and there’s no predicting where they could happen. In dry conditions, a fire can take hold and race through drought-parched grass faster than through a timber forest.

“There’s virtually nothing you can do in prevention other than making sure you’re grazing to proper levels and keep that fuel down through management of your cattle,” said Boon.

And be ready if dry lightning sparks a blaze.

“You’ve got your stock trailer hooked up so that you can put your horses in a pretty quick fashion,” he said.

Many cattle operations have co-ordinated evacuation plans with their neighbours and regional district authorities, supported by B.C. Emergency Management, said Greg Tegart of the B.C. Agriculture Ministry.

Tegart said the ministry encourages other producer groups, such as poultry and pork operators, to get together and create plans to evacuate their livestock in the event of a fire threat.

For example, he said, ranchers in the Paradise Valley implemented a plan in reacting to the China Nose fire last year, working with the Burns Lake Regional District to set up mustering stations for livestock transporters and arranging safe destinations for rescued livestock.

The kind of dry conditions seen in B.C. due to drought and lots of dead timber killed by years of mountain pine beetle infestation carries another risk; fires that burn so hot they damage the soil by destroying the organic material and delaying regrowth. Fire ash can provide a burst of nutrients but it can take years to replace the topsoil.

“I don’t know if there’s any definitive number but I would think it would take a good decade before you get back into a positive cycle that you started with,” said Tegart, an agrologist.

The absence of soil and root systems can also foster erosion in areas where the topsoil layer is fairly thin, said Boon. Denuded forests can also affect snow retention and spring runoff, he added.

The costs for ranchers comes in the need to find different pastures with available forage for their cattle, importing hay earlier in the year than normal or reducing their herds, said Boon.

“It’s compounded this year because the price of hay is probably about double what it has been in the past because there’s a shortage of it,” he said.

The good news for consumers is fires themselves won’t further boost the already soaring price of beef. Drought, which has reduced cattle herds in major producing countries such as the U.S. and Australia, has been a bigger factor on price.