Only Newsom’s Winery Got Paid After Napa Fire and His Team Blamed Coincidence

Rioters torched Los Angeles for a night while Gavin Newsom worked a wine glass at his private Napa vineyard.

Now new reporting shows that same wine company was the only one paid out after a Napa County wildfire disaster.

Napa's ruined winemakers do not believe a word of his team's coincidence explanation for that payout.

PlumpJack Collects While 30 Wineries Are Still Owed $90 Million

The 2025 Pickett Fire tore through Calistoga after igniting on the grounds of Hundred Acre Winery.

Smoke and flames wrecked grape harvests across Napa County, causing an estimated $56 million in losses.

More than 30 wineries and vineyard owners say they are still owed roughly $90 million from Hundred Acre and its owner, Jayson Woodbridge.

Only one company has been paid so far.

That company is PlumpJack Group, the wine and hospitality business Gavin Newsom co-founded in the 1990s.

PlumpJack refuses to say how much it collected.

PlumpJack Group today spans four Napa Valley wineries, several restaurants and bars, and a ski resort.

Retired winemaker Ed Snider was not so lucky.

"It pretty much left me penniless at 65," Snider said.

He also said he felt "uncomfortable" watching PlumpJack quietly get paid while his own claim sat untouched.

Napa County prosecutors have since filed a felony charge against Juan Luis Gutierrez Marfil, an independent contractor accused of recklessly starting the fire.

Three wineries on Howell Mountain have now sued Woodbridge directly, saying smoke ruined their harvest without a single flame reaching their vines.

Newsom's company did not need a lawsuit.

Newsom's Camp Says It Is All Just a Coincidence

PlumpJack insists Newsom had nothing to do with the settlement.

The company says the governor placed his ownership in a blind trust with zero oversight from his office.

Convenient, since Newsom is eyeing a 2028 presidential run and cannot afford another wine country headline.

This is not his first one.

In 2020, Newsom got caught eating indoors, maskless, at the French Laundry in Napa while ordering the rest of California to stay locked down alone.

In June 2025, as riots tore through Los Angeles, Newsom spent roughly 90 minutes sipping wine at his Odette Estate "Vineyard Vibes" fundraiser.

One attendee said Newsom walked around "like this was an everyday occurrence."

Go back further and the pattern holds up even better.

During COVID, nine companies tied to Newsom's PlumpJack empire collected nearly $3 million in Paycheck Protection Program loans meant for struggling small businesses.

One of those entities, Villa Encinal Partners, pulled in $918,720 just eleven days after the program opened, seven times the average loan size for a business its size.

A federal watchdog analyst called that kind of haul "unexpected" for a 14-employee operation.

Now, while dozens of small winemakers wait on a fire settlement, his own company was first in line again and got paid quietly.

A Blind Trust That Somehow Keeps Landing Him Ahead of the Line

The one thing that fires me up about this story is that Newsom wants credit for defending working people while his own wine empire keeps cutting to the front of every line in Napa.

A blind trust does not decide who gets paid first out of a $90 million disaster – somebody at PlumpJack still had to negotiate that deal.

Woodbridge is already facing serious legal exposure over the fire, which gives Hundred Acre every reason to settle fastest with whoever carries the most political weight in Sacramento.

Settle with the governor's company first, quietly, before the felony case and the other 30 lawsuits pile up, and Woodbridge buys himself a friendlier headline heading into court.

That is not a coincidence, that is strategy.

Newsom spent years lecturing Californians about sacrifice and shared burden.

His winery just proved which Californians get paid first when disaster hits.

Every reporter chasing his 2028 campaign now has a simple question sitting in their notebook.

If the blind trust is real, why does it keep working out so well for the man who signed the paperwork?

Sources:

• Daniel Greenfield, "Only California Winery to Get Fire Payout Belongs to Gov. Newsom," Frontpage Mag, August 28, 2026.
• KNews Staff, "Vineyard Owners Outraged Only Newsom Wines Gets Settlement," KNews 94.3 & 104.7, August 29, 2026.
• Tucker Carlson, "Gavin Newsom's French Laundry Birthday Dinner Goes Beyond Mere Hypocrisy," Fox News, November 19, 2020.
• Christopher F. Rufo and Ryan Thorpe, "Gavin Newsom Sipped Cabernet While Los Angeles Burned," City Journal, June 20, 2025.
• Paul Sacca, "Companies Connected to Gov. Gavin Newsom Received Nearly $3 Million in Federal PPP Loans," Blaze News, December 10, 2020.
• Sean Ludford, "Three Howell Mountain Wineries Are Suing One of Napa's Most Recognizable Vintners Over a Fire That Never Touched Their Vines," BevX, August 12, 2026.