美国国家公共电台 NPR After Fires, California Wine Country Wants Tourists Back

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The fires that ravaged 1 parts of Northern California came during peak tourist season for the wineries in the area. Now that the fires are out, Sonoma County wineries and restaurants are open but feeling an economic hit. From member station KQED, Farida Jhabvala Romero reports.

FARIDA JHABVALA ROMERO, BYLINE 2: Buena Vista 3 winery in Sonoma Valley is considered the birthplace of California wine, founded in 1857. Now, the black tree stumps 4 and scorched 5 hills right next to the winery cellar show just how close the flames came - about 30 feet.

TOM BLACKWOOD: The fire could not have come any closer. Buena Vista was surrounded by flames.

ROMERO: Tom Blackwood is general manager here. He thanks firefighters that the winery survived untouched. But now, he's got another problem. He says the month before the fires, they had close to 6,000 visitors, but since they reopened two weeks ago, just 500. He walks to the tasting room and shows me.

BLACKWOOD: You know - what do we have? - six people now at the bar.

ROMERO: Blackwood says it should be like 50 and that the big hit is from tourists who canceled their trips entirely 6.

BLACKWOOD: The people that called us that saw the destruction, that thought or think that, you know, wine country was destroyed, everything was destroyed.

ROMERO: News coverage 7 all over the world showed destruction from the fires says Caroline Beteta. She heads Visit California, the organization tasked with attracting tourists to the state. Beteta spoke 8 to a conference of wine marketers in Santa Rosa, the biggest city in the county. News images of charred 9 houses and red glowing skies flashed behind her.

CAROLINE BETETA: Just the imagery alone, I would argue, did more damage than the actual damage to the tourism infrastructure 10.

ROMERO: If you start driving on back roads in Sonoma Valley, you could see some scorched houses and cars. But Tim Zahner with Sonoma County Tourism says most hotels and wineries in the county are fine now and are pouring in their tasting rooms today.

TIM ZAHNER: You know, if you're back in Chicago and it's November and it's snowing - out here, it's not snowing. You know, it's gorgeous. So it's a good time to come visit.

ROMERO: His group and Beteta's are trying to convince people to come back. Visit California launched a $2 million ad campaign to bring back images of sunny vineyards and happy couples enjoying a glass of red - you know, wine country images.

ROBERT EYLER: This is something that is a brand challenge in the short term.

ROMERO: Economist 11 Robert Eyler at Sonoma State University says, for now, that's all he expects it to be.

EYLER: Unless we have, let's say, repeated fires year after year after year, which will unfortunately act as an erosion of brand, but there's no history to expect that to happen.

ROMERO: That brand is something local small business owners like Mingma Sherpa are counting on. He co-owns La Casa, a Mexican restaurant about 2 miles away from the fire line. It's happy hour here, but Sherpa says half of his customers are gone. Before the fires, at least one tour bus would stop here daily.

MINGMA SHERPA: But since that happened, we get like once a week. So all six, seven days, most of them are cancelled.

ROMERO: He says this town is special. And for those tourists that return, he'll be serving them ice-cold margaritas. For NPR News, I'm Farida Jhabvala Romero.