Year after quake, Napa’s wine industry healthy

Aug 23, 2015

(SFGate) - In the immediate aftermath of last August’s earthquake in Napa, photographs quickly circulated of shattered wine racks, toppled barrels and what looked like an endless river of spilled red wine. Many worried that the 6.0-magnitude quake would render irreversible damage to Napa Valley’s wine industry.

One year later, the local wine community as a whole is as healthy as ever — though a number of individual wineries are still facing the hard reality of structural repairs, lost inventory and displaced tasting rooms.

About 60 percent of Napa-area wineries were hurt to some degree by the quake a year ago Monday, with damage estimated at a total cost of $80 million, according to Patsy McGaughy, communications director of Napa Valley Vintners. Nevertheless, 99 percent of wineries were back to business as usual within 60 days — and back to worrying about harvest conditions, wine sales and the drought.

The earthquake did not result in any large-scale changes to Napa wine pricing or overall inventory. This was due in large part to the fact that the previous vintage, 2013, had been an enormous crop. At the Hess Collection winery, 15,000 cases of 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon were lost in the earthquake, an amount worth $4 million at retail — but total volume after the loss came out roughly equivalent to an average-yielding year


Share: Delicious Digg StumbleUpon Reddit Furl Facebook Google Yahoo Twitter

Comments:

 
Leave a comment





Advertisement