“Aye, there’s the genius and the wonder of the thing!’ he cried. ‘The man pervades London, and no one has heard of him. That’s what puts him on a pinnacle in the records of crime. I tell you, Watson, in all seriousness, that if I could beat that man, if I could free society of him, I should feel that my own career had reached its summit, and I should be prepared to turn to some more placid line of life.”
Sherlock Holmes, from “The Final Problem”, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1893
You’ll see from the two sets of quotes immediately below that the folks in charge are not your friends, and are lying to you about basically everything, including the 2017 California and Washington State wine grape harvests.
May 20, 2017 – Record Rainfall’s Influence on Sonoma County Wine Grape Harvest
June 9, 2017 – Climate Change Is Coming for Your Favorite Wine – Eater
August 8, 2017 – Napa wine harvest 2017: Picking begins in ‘frisky’ year
Sparkling wine producers in California’s Napa Valley have started the 2017 wine harvest, giving thanks for a relatively untroubled growing season
August 18, 2017 – Another Stellar Sonoma County Wine Harvest Begins
September 1, 2017 – Inside 2017 California wine harvest: Grapes look great, labor crisis looms…
September 7, 2017 – California Harvest Reaches Crisis Point | Wine News & Features
September 13, 2017 – California – 2017 Russian River Valley Grape Harvest Is One For The Record Books
September 26, 2017 – California wine grape market adopts a wait-and-see attitude as harvest continues.
October 6, 2017 – Seillan: California 2017 vintage ‘in top 5 of past 20 years‘
October 7, 2017 – California – Record High Temperatures Hurt California Wine Harvest – KVOA.com
March 17, 2017 – Effects of extreme climate on grapes, wine |Washington State University News
June 9, 2017 – Washington’s 2016 wine harvest was the largest in the state’s history
August 4, 2017 – Record grape harvest helps Washington wines gain international recognition
August 31, 2017 – Wildfire smoke hasn’t tainted this year’s grape harvest – yet
September 13, 2017 – Pacific Northwest Winemakers Worry Wildfire Smoke Could Ruin Harvest
So it looks like to back up their lie on how bad the harvest was, they had to burn down some vineyards to artificially create a shortage of grapes and new wine.
I think it was ‘have what we euphemistically call Secret Agents set what would be purported as ‘wildfires’ in the vicinity of the growing grapes.’