Despite fires, California wine is doing just fine – for now

RACHEL LERMAN AP Business Writer HEALDSBURG, Calif. (AP) — If you're worried that wildfires might have created shortages of Northern California's 2019 cabernet sauvignon, or even just imparted it with an undesirable smoky flavor, you can relax. The wine is just fine. For now. Despite a late October blaze that raged through one of the world's best-known wine-growing regions. forcing evacuations in two mid-sized towns, wine production in Sonoma County escaped largely unscathed. Limerick Lane Wines, for instance, avoided serious damage despite flames that licked at two sides of its property in the Russian River Valley just south of Healdsburg. Limerick's grapes were already harvested, crushed and stored in tanks and barrels. The winery's sealed cellar prevented smoke damage to its inve