When wildfire smoke blanketed northern Michigan skies in mid-July, Kasey Wierzba thought the vineyard at Shady Lane Cellars in Suttons Bay looked like a different planet. “That kind of pinky, peachy haze really was filtering through the whole vineyard. The visibility was really minimal,” Wierzba, who is the general manager and executive winemaker at Shady Lane Cellars, told Vivian La of Interlochen Public Radio. Wierzba also thought about how the smoke might impact the grapes, something that the wine industry is becoming more familiar with as wildfires increase in frequency and intensity.
