(ModBee) - The wildfires that tore through Northern California wine country caused tourism to temporarily plummet but spared the vast majority of vineyard acres and had little impact on already harvested grape, said a panel of experts who weighed in Wednesday on the state of the industry.

Still, “Mother Nature” was the big story in California’s wine industry in 2017, and the continued momentum of the current economy is shaping up as the thing to watch in 2018, said the panel, assembled at the 24th annual Unified Wine & Grape Symposium at the Hyatt Regency Sacramento. The gathering is billed as the largest trade show of its kind in North America, with some 14,000 wine industry men and women in town with hundreds of booths and exhibits at the Sacramento Convention Center.