Wineries, restaurants and businesses throughout California give proceeds to North Bay fire relief

More than 150 wineries, hotels and restaurants around California are coming together to help North Bay fire victims in a project called California Wine Strong.

The participating businesses will donate part of their proceeds for the month of October to relief funds in Sonoma, Napa and Mendocino counties.

The Monterey County Vintners and Growers Association helped organize the project with other wine leaders throughout the state.

Kim Stemler with Monterey County Vintners and Growers Association says, iIt is so overwhelmingly heartbreaking for all of us, this is the least we can do. The wine community is a very generous, tight knit community. And when one of us needs help we all step up. Everyone wants to give and you can go to the nearest tasting rooms and buy some of their wine and 100% of these proceeds are going to the fire relief.”

Cima Collina tasting room in Carmel Valley is one of the participating wineries. Tasting room employee, Charles Doss says “It’s the least we can do, when you consider that the area there is known so much for wine I think symbolically the sale of wine to assist them, couldn’t be a better gesture so we can only do all we can do to help.”

Wineries on the Central Coast are also offering to help with harvest for those wineries that have been impacted. “We have wineries here that have offered their own physical winery to help bring in grapes and make wine, because some of these wineries have lost their physical winery. And then vineyards take 3 to 5 years to replace still really tragically there’s been some vineyards that have been affected as well” says Stemler.

Stemler says more businesses are signing up to donate proceeds each day. She is hoping the relief help will soon start to spread to other states with strong wine regions.

For a list of all participating businesses click here.