Massive fires and COVID have battered California’s wineries By Sasha Abramsky Robin Cooper remembers the arrival of the blaze last autumn in her patch of wine country. “We could see the fires converging and coming up over the mountain,” she said. “There was a lot of smoke. Horrible, horrible air quality. We could see flames.” Cooper, the 64-year-old director of hospitality and customer relations at the small Behrens Family Winery in St. Helena, fled with her colleagues as part of a large-scale evacuation. When they returned to the winery after the Glass Fire passed, the scene was apocalyptic. The main building, the guest apartment and the case goods room storing thousands of bottles of wine were all gone. Along with the rest of the wine stock there, Cooper’s personal collection of more than 1,500 bottles had literally gone up in smoke.