Waiting Out the Fires to Determine the Damage

It’s a challenging time to be a grape grower. Doug Maragas of Margaras Winery has been watching the fires and waiting to learn just how deep the impact will be. The Bench Fire, which is 67,238 acres and 84% contained as of Tuesday, burned up to the edge of one of the vineyards on land he’s leasing near the Pelton Dam. The grapes need to be tested to determine if they’ve been affected by the smoke.

“What we’ll do is harvest a small part early, just enough to make some sample wines to send to the lab and test for the particulate or the content from the particulate that could be smoked and would affect the wine if it’s in high enough concentration,” he explains. Those grapes are used to make the “Legal Zin” label.

If it turns out the grapes are damaged, Maragas says, “We’d have to skip the vintage, so we wouldn’t make wine out of it, and that’s a loss because we’ve already sunk [money]. It’s very expensive to cultivate grapes for premium wine because you prune multiple times a year, and you thin, and taking care of it. It just really adds up… Our zin is $45 a bottle. So, if we did 300 cases of zin, that turns out to be a lot of money.”

The Bench Fire burned up to the edge of a Maragas Winery vineyard near Pelton Dam. Credit: Doug Maragas

The winery has two vineyards. The second, larger one is next to the tasting room north of Terrebonne. From there Maragas has been watching the Akawa Butte Fire, 9 miles away. That fire was 27,435 acres and 85% contained as of Tuesday. He says two years ago, the winery was evacuated due to a fire burning near Culver.

Maragas says even if a fire is burning miles away, it can destroy a crop. “When it (air quality) gets into the hazardous category is when we have to start thinking about the grapes.”

The smoke and threat of fire have cut into the number of visitors stopping at the winery.

“It’s peaceful, but you know, if you’re inhaling smoke, it certainly takes away from it. You’re sitting out here and you can’t see Smith Rock or Gray Butte or any of the peaks of the Cascades, and it’s just smoky all around you,” he says.

Maragas Winery offers live music and Sunday dinners, which he says move inside if it’s unpleasant outside.

He opened the winery in 1999 and his concerns about wildfire smoke have been building in recent years.

“I’m hoping that it stays habitable, and that would mean that it doesn’t continue to go down every other year, that you need to be concerned about a fire burning your vineyard down. It hasn’t been that way all the time that we’ve been here, but definitely we’ve been having issues since 2022, I’d say is the most significant,” he says. “From 2022 to current days, for us has been a little bit challenging.”

This article appears in the Source August 6, 2026.