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W i n e s & V i n e s O C T O B e R 2 0 1 4 15 S E P T E M B E R N E W S O C T O B E R N E W S N apa, Calif.—The enduring image of the Napa earthquake will likely be the piles of barrels and racks from toppled barrel stacks. While most winery buildings made it through the earthquake with little to no dam- age, aside from the dramatic exception of Trefethen Family Vineyards' historic winery building, several wineries suffered damage, lost wine and had staff spending precious time at the onset of harvest cleaning and reorganiz- ing their barrel rooms. Despite the example of the 2003 San Simeon Earthquake, after which a forklift driver had to be rescued from beneath a pile of collapsed barrel stacks, most wineries throughout California still stack barrels up to six levels high with two-barrel racks lay- ing on top of the barrels below. The setup provides for quick and relatively easy access to barrels and maximizes available space in a barrel room. But the big drawback of this stacking method became all too apparent to several wineries near the epicenter of the quake in the Carneros American Viticultural Area and as far into Napa Valley as the Oak Knoll AVA. Napa Barrel Care, located on a Highway 29 frontage road at the southern limit of the city of Napa, suffered extensive damage in the Aug. 24 earthquake. Employees there were still working to get everything back in order when Wines & Vines went to print Sept. 16. Owner Mike Blom said the facility had 18,000 barrels owned by 43 different clients at the time of the earthquake, and half of them hit the floor. The cleanup was particu- larly challenging in the facility's smaller, 10,000-square-foot room, where almost every barrel rack toppled. Blom estimates he'll have to sink $250,000 into cleaning up the mess. He is also planning to strap the top racks of his barrel stacks to try and minimize dangerous swaying in the event of another earthquake. "Oh we're strap- ping everything. Absolutely," he said. "I'm more devastated by clients losing wine than by anything else." Winery buildings suffered very little in the earthquake, said Josh Marrow, principal with the San Francisco, Calif.-based firm Partner Engineering and Science Inc. Marrow is an expert in structural and earthquake engineer- ing who has consulted wineries and studied how earthquakes affect them. In Carneros, Marrow said he saw the dif- ference between four-barrel racks and two- barrel racks. One winery that had switched to four-barrel racks, which have twice as broad a base as two-barrel racks, had minimal dam- age, while a neighboring winery with two- barrel racks had nearly every rack tumble. "The four-barrel racks performed miracu- lously," he said. The two-rack system has a considerable weakness in that racks for levels two and above only need to slide a few inches before they slip off the barrels below them. It takes only one rack to slip off one barrel to trigger the domino effect on barrel stacks. Marrow said strapping the top sets of barrels works quite well with four-barrel racks, but it's not as effective with two-barrel racks because it doesn't solve the issue of racks "walking" or tOP StORY Earthquake Demonstrates Barrel Stack Vulnerability tOP StORY Financial Impact of Quake Rises N apa, Calif.—Following the earthquake centered south of the city of Napa on Aug. 24, Napa County officials estimated that wine companies sustained $48 million in damages, but they warned the total could rise as more information was collected. The local trade organization Napa Valley Vintners asked Silicon Valley Bank, a major lender to wineries, to help assess damage. Bank executive vice president Rob McMil- lan, who founded SVB's wine practice, con- tacted as many wineries as practical in two days and submitted a report to Napa County executive officer Nancy Watt and the Napa County Board of Supervisors. He said, "We believe the earthquake losses to Napa wineries and vineyards will conservatively fall in the range of $70 mil- lion to $100 million, with a most likely loss approximating $80 million." McMillan used proprietary financial infor- mation, direct interviews with the wineries suffering the worst damage, first-hand inspec- tions of a sample of the most-impacted winer- ies, and survey responses from more than 50% of Napa wineries to make his estimate. Included in the analysis of winery losses are damage to buildings and infrastructure such as wastewater ponds and private bridges, winemaking equipment, cleanup and removal costs, vineyard irrigation, bottled in- ventory in current release, bottling supplies, finished inventory ready for bottling, bulk wine, barrels, lost revenue from damaged tasting rooms, losses from business interrup- tion and loss of wine held in wine libraries. McMillan estimates that losses to indepen- dent vineyard operations including losses to machinery, supplies, cleanup costs, irrigation and piping, loss of revenue from delayed har- vest and damaged infrastructure should fall in a range of $10 million to $20 million, with an expected loss of $15 million. He didn't include losses to independent warehouse and wine-storage operations, es- timated at several million dollars. He said, however, "Losses in custom- crush wineries were quite significant and are included in our calculations." Many wineries and custom-crush facilities are still cleaning up and unable to fully es- timate their losses. (Continued on page 17.) (Continued on page 16.) Trinchero Napa Valley winery uses Australian- made racks from RGB Industries that don't rest on the barrels when stacked to provide more stability in the event of an earthquake.