*Update at bottom
I’ve received some inquires regarding the Napa Earthquake and whether it was affecting us here at Paso Wine Barrels. The short answer is no.
The fallout from the damage which is over a billion dollars so far – mainly concentrated in the south end of Napa County – is still not known, but so far, the Central Coast of California has not been largely affected by the seismic activity north of the Bay Area.
With the damage to so many wine barrels, it has been wondered if there might be a shortage. However, many of the wineries had just recently done bottling to get ready for 2014’s vintage, so they had emptied the wine and most of those empty barrels, don’t appear to be damaged.
Again, reports are all still preliminary and much of what has been reported, doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of what real harm has been done both physically as well as monetarily.
Damage was very localizedĀ
Also, those in other parts of the country or overseas speculated as to how the big tremor affected all our wine regions. To be clear, there was significant damage near or at where the epicenter (was not far from the Napa County Airport), but it shook only in the immediate area and was not widely felt. Being just north of San Pablo Bay, except for Vallejo, Sonoma and obviously Napa, not much in the way of damage was incurred. The Central Coast didn’t feel even the slightest whiff of a quake.
Although harvest started early this season, percentage-wise, much of the berries have not been picked yet and that is some consolation for those in Napa. Luckily, a cooler than normal summer helped slow ripening … or we may have had a different story.
We will keep monitoring barrel needs, but it seems for now, there doesn’t appear to be much or any problem. Paso Wine Barrels will keep barreling away. š
*UPDATE: As some had thought, once the devastation could be viewed more clearly,Ā damageĀ is not as bad as it originally was reported. Obviously there’s destruction, but as this story offers, things aren’t as bad as news services first noted.
Cheers,
Daryle Hier
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Paso Wine Barrels 