A Quake Reminds Napa Winemakers of California's Faults

The earthquake that struck Napa Valley at 3:20 a.m. on Aug. 24 produced the expected disaster photographs of piles of broken bottles and wine bleeding into the street. David Duncan, chief executive officer of Silver Oak winery, posted just that image on Twitter two hours after the 6.0 tremor, getting 5,000 retweets. However, the more significant damage wrought on the wine producing area by the quake—the worst in the area in 25 years—didn’t involve crushed glass. Wineries hold on to relatively few bottles. Most are immediately shrink-wrapped after they’re filled and labeled, then sent off to warehouses and on to distributors. The trouble was the barrels.

In many wineries, they’re stacked six high; and if a few of the top ones rock back and forth enough, they fall like Jenga pieces, crushing the ones below in an avalanche. The quake shook René Schlatter, CEO of Starmont Wines and Merryvale Vineyards, awake. “I was out of bed in three seconds, and I had quite a bit of wine that night,” he says. Schlatter immediately headed over to Merryvale, the older of his two wineries. It was the first to produce wine after Prohibition ended and has a building dating from 1933. Once he saw Merryvale was fine, he went back home, figuring the Starmont facility, which is just eight years old, wouldn’t have been affected. Then, the next morning, he says, “Our team started sending us pictures, and I was like, ‘Holy s-‍-‍-.’ ”