The Pickett Fire ignited on August 21, 2025, at a property on Pickett Road in Calistoga and burned roughly 6,800 acres before it was contained, tearing through some of Napa Valley’s most storied vineyard land on Howell Mountain and beyond.
More than a year later, the financial reckoning is still playing out, and it offers a pointed lesson for any winery, vineyard, or agricultural business that has been or could be hit by wildfire: recovering your losses is rarely automatic, and the process can take far longer than rebuilding in itself.
The Damage: Smoke Taint, Not Just Flames
Preliminary assessments put agricultural damage at as much as $65 million, across nearly 1,500 acres of Napa farmland. As is typical of wildfire losses in wine country, the harm was not confined to vines and buildings that burned. The larger driver was smoke taint, which can potentially occur when wildfire smoke penetrates grape skins—and even corked bottles—and leaves behind volatile chemical compounds that impart unpleasant, ashy flavors to the finished wine, rendering entire vintages unpalatable. At least half a dozen wineries on Howell Mountain have claimed that their grapes were smoke tainted and unusable.
The California Legislature has begun to recognize the significance of smoke damage as a distinct category of loss. On September 15, 2026, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bills (“AB”) 1642 and 1795 as part of a wildfire recovery package that sets first-in-the-nation standards for smoke-damage testing and remediation and requires insurers to cover qualifying smoke-damage claims in homes within a fire zone. So far, these protections apply only to residential fire coverage. Winery and vineyard owners dealing with smoke taint to grapes, wine inventory, and agricultural operations remain outside the scope of these new laws and they continue to navigate a commercial insurance landscape that offers far less clarity and far fewer mandated protections.
Who is Responsible, and Who has Actually Been Paid?
The fire is reported to have started at a property in Calistoga owned by famed Napa Valley vintner Jayson Woodbridge of Hundred Acre Wines. Napa County prosecutors have since filed a felony charge against a contractor who reportedly admitted that he disposed of hot ashes into a burn pile, allegedly causing the fire. He has pled not guilty.
More than 30 wineries are seeking a combined total of approximately $90 million in compensation. So far, only one claimant is publicly known to have been paid: PlumpJack Group, which reached an undisclosed settlement after losing 60 of 129 acres of vines at its Oso Vineyard. The rest of the field, including growers who have reportedly lost their entire crop and, in some reported cases, their livelihoods, is still waiting. Some have filed suit. Wineries are concerned that their combined damages will far exceed the resources of the alleged perpetrators of the fire, including available insurance resources. And Cal Fire’s right to recover its suppression costs puts yet another claimant in line for a limited recovery pool.
That makes insurance a critical source of recovery for wineries. But that, too, carries numerous challenges. Insurance carriers are increasingly scrutinizing wildfire claims to find any basis to limit or deny coverage obligations. California’s fire insurance market is in crisis: after years of catastrophic wildfire seasons, many carriers have pulled back from underwriting in fire-prone regions or withdrawn from the market altogether, while those that remain have imposed stricter terms, higher premiums, and larger deductibles. The carriers still in the market are facing massive exposure, and therefore are incentivized to dispute valuation, contest whether losses qualify as covered inventory, challenge causation, and invoke policy exclusions. And carriers that are exiting the market are free to take on more aggressive coverage positions without concern for reputational and business risks. For a winery or vineyard owner already reeling from a destroyed vintage, an aggressive coverage denial can be the difference between survival and closure.
The Takeaways for Wine and Agricultural Businesses
The Pickett Fire litigation illustrates several recurring problems we see after every major wildfire season:
- Smoke taint claims are harder to prove and value than fire damage. Valuing a wine inventory loss requires verifying the existence, volume, and varietal of the impacted wine through documents such as weigh tags, inventory records, and tank reports, calculating projected sales value, and deducting unincurred costs. In this case, claimants have submitted lab test reports, expert analyses of those reports, and sensory evaluations by respected Napa Valley winemakers to support their damages.
- Waiting for a defendant or its insurer to “do the right thing” is not a strategy. The winery accused of responsibility for the fire has responded to some claimants by disputing their data and even suggesting claimants were dumping 2025 vintages due to a down wine market rather than smoke damage.
- Tendering a first-party claim is often necessary. Even if a third party (via its insurer) is ultimately responsible, affected businesses should not wait to notify their own carriers. Delaying a tender can prejudice an insured’s claim and sometimes lead to avoidable denials.
- Coverage classification fights are common. Carriers frequently dispute whether smoke-tainted grapes were crop or inventory at the time of loss, which often affects which coverage applies and sometimes whether there is coverage at all.
- Being organized and moving early matters. When a defendant’s resources may not cover every claimant in full, the order, documentation, and strength of each claim can determine whether a business is made whole or left with pennies on the dollar.
- The insurance market has hardened. Increasing wildfire risk has reshaped the wine insurance market in California, Washington, and Oregon, leading to stricter underwriting, higher premiums, larger deductibles, and more aggressive insurer coverage positions.
The longer arc is sobering. Several wineries hit by the 2017 Atlas Fire, 2020 Glass Fire, and others have faced years of litigation, insurance battles, and eventual bankruptcies and closures. A shortfall in the initial recovery compounds for a decade.
How Shartsis Can Help
Shartsis Friese has decades of experience representing policyholders whose claims were wrongfully denied, underpaid, or delayed. Our broader insurance recovery practice has handled fire claims across multiple industries, including highly successful, excess-of-policy-limits recoveries for Napa winery smoke and fire losses.
If your winery, vineyard, or other business has suffered losses from the Pickett Fire or any other wildfire, and you are unsure how to value your claim or where you stand in line for recovery, we would be glad to talk. Early guidance on documenting losses, engaging the right experts, and evaluating your options against a responsible party and your own insurer can make a material difference in the outcome.
This post is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. If you have questions about a specific wildfire-related claim, please contact us directly.
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