Where life is a cabernet, vintners mop up post-quake mess

The earthquake that rumbled through California's central coast struck hard at the region's burgeoning wine industry, toppling barrels, spilling cases and leaving some wineries awash in rivers of merlot and cabernet.

The area roughly midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco has become one of California's most productive wine-producing regions, with more than 80 wineries ringing Paso Robles, the small town hit hardest in Monday's magnitude-6.5 earthquake.

The quake created a mess for dozens of those wineries, with owners left to mop up their tasting rooms and cellars.

Many said it would take them years to recover, particularly because the quake struck when most of this year's vintage was stored in unstable barrels, instead of in mounted fermentation tanks or bottles.

At the Dover Canyon winery, 100 wooden barrels stacked in a pyramid collapsed in a heap, breaking open a half-dozen casks and crushing dozens of cases of bottled wine, some of premium vintage.

"We walked in here and it was ankle-deep, with wine flowing out the door into the rocks and garden area," said co-owner Mary Baker. "It was pretty distressing. We can absorb a certain amount of loss, but it's going to be hard because we're a boutique winery on a boutique budget."

Overall, wine is a $170 million-a-year business in San Luis Obispo County, according to the Paso Robles Vintners and Growers Association.

The county is California's fourth-largest premium coastal growing region, behind Sonoma, Napa and Monterey counties, the trade group says. It boasts 18,500-plus acres in production, with cabernet sauvignon leading.

The association did not have a loss estimate, and most winery owners said they were still trying to count losses.

At Turley Wine Cellars, owner Larry Turley estimated he lost more than $1 million in wine when 700 wooden barrels in his storage cellar toppled like dominos. Among the losses was a barrel of port worth $24,000, he said.

On Tuesday, winery general manager Ehren Jordan tried to drain the wine that remained in the barrels at the top of the mess. The aroma of wine hung heavily in the air.

"As you are in the stack and looking through (the barrels), you say, 'Wow. That was a really expensive wine. Too bad it's empty,"' he said.

Most of the wineries didn't have earthquake insurance because of the prohibitive cost and the high deductibles.

Pasquale Mastantuano, owner of Mastantuano Winery, said it would cost $2,000 a month to buy earthquake insurance with a $100,000 deductible.

He estimated his winery sustained $90,000 in losses, including 1,200 gallons of wine.

"You just take chances. We're just farmers, basically, and the farmers take the brunt of everything," Mastantuano said.

At Wild Horse Winery, barrels in the 8,000-cask wine cellar fell on an employee who was operating a forklift when the quake struck, said Stephanie Moritz, spokeswoman for Jim Beam Brands, which owns the winery.

Joshua Marrow, a structural engineer who specializes in earthquake-proofing wineries, spent part of Tuesday at Mastantuano Winery surveying the damage.

He said wineries are particularly vulnerable to earthquakes, given that the piles of casks are prone to toppling over.

Wine in the casks is also at the last stage of production before it's bottled and sold and can represent years of work and investment, he said.

"This is a big deal for the wineries because all of their assets sit in the casks. It's three years of loss right there," he said.

From another story:

"We lost our chimney, and a bunch of barrels of wine fell down," said Dan Panico, owner of Dover Canyon Winery, a tiny, 2,000-case-a-year producer eight miles west of Paso Robles. "They were stacked in pyramids and fell to the floor. I'd say there's a couple hundred gallons of wine on the floor from the barrels. In some areas, it ran out the front of the winery, 2 to 3 inches deep."

"The winery at Harmony Cellars in Cambria, near the quake's epicenter, is a four-story redwood building, "and I saw it bend," said a shaken Linda Murray, a winery employee."

"In 2002, area winemakers crushed nearly 140,000 tons of grapes. With 85 wineries in and around Paso Robles alone, winegrowing is by far the largest agricultural pursuit in San Luis Obispo County."

"Jackie Curtis, office manager of Edna Valley Winery in San Luis Obispo, estimated that the winery had "five to 10 cases' worth on the floor of our tasting room. The aisles are covered in glass and wine." As in many wineries, oak barrels brimming with 60 gallons of wine each are stacked six-high at Edna Valley. "They're easily 25 feet high," Curtis said. "They started swaying back and forth. I'm very surprised they didn't come down."

"Gary Conway, proprietor of Carmody McKnight Winery, said the earthquake coincided with military exercises at nearby Ft. Roberts, and he initially thought the two were related. "We heard the distant rumbling of cannon fire, and as I came outside, I heard that in coordination with the earthquake. That unnerved us," said Conway, a former actor who appeared in the television series "Lost in Space."

"He said damage at his winery was confined to the tasting room and wine cellar, and he was relieved that he lost only an estimated 200 bottles of wine. "We also happen to make champagne out here," he said. "We broke open a bottle and drank it."

"Paso Robles wineries — be they tiny two-person operations or subsidiaries of such giant producers as E&J Gallo and Kendall-Jackson — cultivate a ground-level friendliness. Paso Robles winemakers and proprietors "often will be in the wine-tasting room to meet and visit with tasters as they share their latest releases..."

"Linda Colbert, bookkeeper at Adelaida Cellars, a small, highly regarded winery northwest of Paso Robles, said the "great camaraderie here" is what attracted her to the wine business. "It's not cutthroat. If one of us succeeds, we all succeed," she said. "People here step in when there's a crisis. That hasn't changed whether it's a good time or a harder economic time."

Lots of wineries online, open for visits, selling by the bottle or the case.

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