Quake Gives Wineries a New Definition of ‘Bottle Shock’

For the Paso Robles area’s tightly woven community of winemakers, Monday’s earthquake was a jarring reminder that nature gives and takes back.

By the time the shaking throughout the region’s vineyards stopped, tasting rooms and production floors of numerous wineries were awash in recently harvested wine spilling from broken bottles and tumbled barrels.

“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.

San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties have become California’s third most productive premium coastal wine producing area, after Monterey and Sonoma counties. 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. For outsiders, the Paso Robles appellation on wine labels increasingly defines the once-somnolent farming region.

The earthquake strewed wine, broken glass, olive oil and other food products on tasting-room floors at the Harmony Cellars, Edna Valley and Carmody McKnight wineries, among others. It left proprietors picking up shards, mopping up swill and counting up bottles of prized product that will never make it to the dinner table.

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.”

To some locals, the earthquake seemed an insult added to injury after three consecutive years of a worldwide oversupply of wine and general economic malaise that have shaken the California industry more slowly but just as thoroughly as a temblor. Yet the quake seemed unlikely to loosen the fabric of comradely support and informality that is the hallmark of the Paso Robles winegrowing culture.

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,” said Robin Zazeuta, winery programs manager for the Paso Robles Vintners & Growers Assn.

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.”