Gredos Wildfires 2026: How the Fires Will Affect the Garnacha Harvest, According to the Winemakers

In the second half of July, wildfires burned through the Sierra de Gredos and the hills west of Madrid. The numbers are hard to take in. More than 70,000 hectares have burned across the provinces of Ávila and Madrid, close to 90,000 people have been evacuated or confined, and the Spanish press is already calling it the worst forest fire disaster the country has recorded. In Ávila alone, over 45,000 hectares are gone. As I write this, the fire near Burgohondo is still not fully extinguished, and the fourth heatwave of the year is sitting on top of the region.

If you buy Spanish wine, this is not a distant news story. Gredos is one of the most exciting fine wine zones in Spain right now: old bush vine Garnacha on granite and sand, small parcels, small producers. DO Cebreros, San Martín de Valdeiglesias, the Alberche and Tiétar valleys. Exactly the kind of wines the importers I work with have been listing more and more of.

My phone started ringing while the fires were still burning. The wineries call me because they are worried, and because they know their importers will have questions. So instead of answering the same questions ten times, I am writing down here what I know today, directly from the people on the ground.

The first thing to say is that the vineyards themselves have held up better then the headlines suggest. Pete James, of the new and very promising project PJ Antipoda, wrote to me: "So far the vineyards are ok, it is just a worry because they can't seem to put them out and they keep coming back in various parts all over the valley. Just have to wait and hope this week, but there has been major damage to the forests and natural environment here." Another, Marc Isart, told me the fires have hit his zone hard, but that he believes almost all of his vineyard has been spared. He hasn't been able to get close enough to confirm it yet. That detail says a lot about the situation: many growers still cant reach their own parcels.

There is a reason vineyards survive where forest does not. A tended vineyard is a firebreak. Green vines, cleared soil, low fuel. In several cases the fire burned right up to the vines and stopped. Comando G saved Las Iruelas, their single hectare grand cru, even though the flames reached the edges of the parcel. But the same logic explains the anger you hear in the region about rural abandonment. Jesús Soto of Soto y Manrique, who farms 15 hectares of small plots in Cebreros and lost around five of them to the fire, put it plainly to the Spanish press: fires are put out in spring, with clearing machines and maintained paths, not in August.

Not everyone was as fortunate as the growers who called me. At Bernabeleva in San Martín de Valdeiglesias, wich farms more than 50 small parcels, at least 30 have burned. "The vineyard parcels that pay the day to day bills are almost all razed," Juan from the winery told the press. Doreen Auerbach and Cristian Martín of Vino y Se Quedó, who farm a couple of parcels in Cebreros, are not celebrating anything yet: "If the wind picks up, what is left can still burn."

The bigger question for the 2026 vintage is not fire, it is smoke. Daniel Landi of Comando G estimates they could lose 50% of the harvest to smoke exposure, even with the vineyards intact. Marta Burgos, technical director of DO Cebreros, says there is still no official damage assessment because growers can't access their plots, but the worry has allready moved to the harvest: a lot of smoke, a lot of ash, and the experience of the 2021 and 2022 fires was not encouraging, at a much smaller scale than this.

So what does this mean if you are an importer with Gredos wines on your list, or thinking about adding some? My honest reading today: expect smaller allocations from the 2026 vintage, expect some cuvées not to be made at all, and don't expect anyone to give you certainty before the grapes are in. Smoke taint shows itself at harvest and in the winery, not before. The producers here are serious people. Nobody I work with will bottle a compromised wine to save a vintage, and I will taste everything before it goes anywhere near your portfolio. That is my job in normal years too.

And one more thing. The 2024 and 2025 vintages are in barrel and bottle, untouched and very good. If you want to support this region, the best way is not sympathy. It is a purchase order. These are small wineries without sales teams, and right now they are watching the sky for wind. If you want an updated picture for any specific producer, call me. I am on the phone with the valley every week anyway.