Here in wine country, where the weather always turns warm or hot about this time of year, everything is in a heightened state of frenzy.
The wine business really is a 365-days-a-year enterprise, and in Napa and Sonoma counties, which represent a tiny fraction of the wine made in all 50 states, the business is extremely stressful because so much money is wrapped up in it.
Neither of these popular wine-producing regions has experienced a disastrous vintage recently. The last disaster was 1972, when it rained so heavily that the harvest crews had a hard time, standing in mud while trying to harvest grapes that likely wouldn’t produce great wine….