Here's something you don't see every day: a Cessna 172 airplane hoisted out of a Sonoma vineyard. On Aug. 19, after his engine failed, pilot William Tomkovic of Healdsburg made an emergency landing in Russian River Valley's El Diablo Vineyard, one of California's best Chardonnay vineyards and a source for top wines from Kosta Browne, Arista and Ram’s Gate. El Diablo is located just 2 miles away from Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport.
While you might not think of vineyards as runways, this isn't the first time planes have landed among grapes. In 2005, a Cessna crash landed in a vineyard row belonging to Jaeger Vineyards, taking out 12 vines.
Most notably, in April 1956, a B-26 Marauder bomber plane carrying five members of the U.S. Air Force crashed on the Steinbeck Vineyards & Wines property in Paso Robles, 300 yards from the family’s ranch. Every year, when the vineyard is tilled, more airplane scraps are unearthed, many of which are displayed in their tasting room. Steinbeck even produces a wine labeled “The Crash” in memory of the event.
In this incident, the pilot was uninjured and the Cessna was relatively unscathed. The vines weren’t as lucky. "Unfortunately, the emergency plane landing was in El Diablo," confirmed Andy Mejia, the chairperson of the Lytton Rancheria of California, which owns the vineyard. "Just a few rows over and he would have landed in the Grenache, not to mention there was a big empty field close by. But as luck would have it he landed in the high end Chardonnay, [and] took out about 100 vines."
