On August 27, the Pine Gulch Fire became the largest wildfire in Colorado’s history. It started from a lightning strike on July 31, and over the course of a month, it had burned more than 130,000 acres in the western part of the state. The blaze hasn’t claimed any lives, but it blanketed the surrounding area in smoke, including the nearby Palisade wine region, where two-thirds of Colorado’s vineyards and a quarter of the state’s wineries are located.
There’s significantly less research on how wildfire smoke influences marijuana than there is for wine grapes, but Colorado’s fires have also impacted its outdoor cannabis farms. Airborne toxins from man-made structures that catch fire pose a risk if those toxins land on cannabis’ flowers. Additionally, much of Colorado’s outdoor cannabis is grown around Pueblo, which is much farther than Colorado’s primary wine region from the epicenter of the fire and smoke.
Shawn Honaker, the founder of Yeti Farms in Pueblo, Colorado, says this is the second time he’s had to deal with fires. The first was in 2017, when flames were mere miles from his farm. This year wasn’t such a close call. As a business that primarily sells concentrates, he has found the ash and smoke doesn’t degrade the product, though the smoke did shade his plants from the intense ultraviolet rays of the summer sun.
Read more at winemag.com