California Earthquake Destroys Half the Wine in Napa Vineyard

Wine drinkers will cringe in hearing that a 6.0 earthquake in Northern California Sunday shook up the Napa Valley Vineyards, damaging barrel-fulls of wine.

According to the Associated Press, the harvesting season had just begun for the 2014, and now winemakers will have to clean up some of their best wines from the ground as high-end wineries such as B.R. Cohn lost up to 50 percent of its product. At Dahl Vineyards one of its barrels containing $16,000 worth of Pinot Noir was wiped out, and the rest of its barrels had to be salvaged using forklifts.

Winemaker Tom Montgomery told AP that even without visible damage to barrels, the fact that they were shaken could cause problems in the wine’s aging process.

It was the strongest earthquake to hit the area in 25 years and although Napa only produces 4 percent of California’s wines, they have the reputation of producing some of the best wine in the world. Napa Valley produces around $50 billion in economic activity a year and according to Bloomberg, could be facing $4 billion in losses.

PicThx @davidsilveroak