Duly noted.
More updates are trickling in…
First, some very sad news. It seems there was one fatality possibly as a result of the earthquake. Leigh McDermott, a former Mondavi employee, passed away on Sunday. She was found unresponsive in her home and the condition which caused her passing may or may not have been a result of the earthquake.
Artesa lost a barrel or two, but nothing they can’t absorb. Amazing due to their location.
City Winery Napa had no structural damage but a lot of broken glass and wine. They expect to reopen this week, but are day-to-day.
Modus Operandi Cellars had large losses. They haven’t released any numbers, but it seems that their wine was among that stored at NBC, and they don’t seem optimistic that any of it survived.
The Napa Red Cross has stated they have all the funds they need for services related to the earthquake.
There are plenty of other organizations that will always be in need–the one I posted earlier for Community Action is just one.
Quick update on Buoncristiani–they have 150+ barrels at NBC and implied that they were among the barrels in the piles on the floor.
BX Wines lost a “large percentage of barrels.”
I got an email from Orin Swift that makes it sound like they were impacted…to what extent I don’t know:
Friends,
As most of you know at approximately 3:20am on Sunday the 24th of August an earthquake registering 6.0 on the Richter scale hit the Napa Valley. Most importantly there were very few injuries both within our group of friends, families, and the entire valley. The fact that the earthquake hit when it did is why instead of talking about loss of life we’re talking about something as simple as losing wine. Obviously one can be replaced, the other cannot. We are in the process of assessing what if any losses we suffered and our thoughts and prayers go out to all members of the greater Napa and Sonoma Communities as we enter into harvest.
Thank you for your continued support and we look forward to seeing you in the future.
The Phinney and Orin Swift families
Friends of mine have a cool t-shirt for sale with all profits going towards those affected. Bonfire - Design your own shirt on material you’ll love
I guess it is like kick starter and you only get your short if it is fully funded. I ordered one.
Cool idea
It looks like Modus Operandi has lost most if not all of the wine they had in barrels.
The largest single loss location will be Napa Barrel Care. At this point the focus is on safety as opposed to urgency as the barrels that have been lost are lost, and even if they find barrels which stayed intact but the bung was out, it’s too late. Over the past couple days they moved 800 barrels–a combination of safe, empty, and damaged–and have barely made a dent. It’s a slow, deliberate process, one barrel at a time. Carole Meredith has posted a couple of videos to her Facebook page. (Don’t let OSHA see them!)
Wow…terrible
I posted this in the other thread also…
Fun way to donate if you are in Napa Valley - this Saturday (8/30) 5-8 pm the Stanley Cup and members of the LA Kings will be at the Westin Verasa on McKinstry Street (across from the Wine Train). You can take a photo with the cup (I think it is $5 and all money will be donated to the Earthquake Relief Fund).
Buy Napa / Drink Often…
Just got an email from Mattiasson’s - they’ve been hit hard but are helping others with a special release - here’s the info:
Dear Friends,
Most of you have already heard that Napa sustained a 6.1 magnitude earthquake last Sunday. The good news is that we are all safe; the bad news is that our house was badly damaged, resulting in a “red tag”, forcing us to move out. All of the barrels holding all our 2013 wine tumbled to the ground, some breaking apart, other staying intact–the cleanup is still in progress and we don’t yet know the extent of the loss of wine.
First, we want to say THANK YOU to all of you for the helping hands, calls, emails of concern and the outpouring of support. We are frankly overwhelmed that there are such a large number of people that care about us. Our lives have been completely disrupted, during the middle of harvest, no less, but we know that with the support of our community we will get through this huge bump in the road and be even stronger on the other side.
At the same time, we realize that many others who were affected by the earthquake are not as fortunate. We are very concerned about those in the community who have limited resources and have been displaced from their homes and need shelter or other support to get back on track.
We feel compelled to do our part to help these folks.
We are offering a limited release of a specially crafted MATTHIASSON Quake Cuvée in an effort to raise earthquake recovery funds. ALL of the after-tax profits will be given to the NAPA VALLEY COMMUNITY DISASTER RELIEF FUND.
Link for the Cuvee is http://www.matthiasson.com/Purchase-Wine/Current-Offerings
Link for the NVCDRF - Earthquake: Learn - Napa Valley Community Foundation
We are taking orders now so that we can help the community as soon as possible and the wine will ship in the Spring 2015. Whether you choose to buy one bottle, six bottles or three cases, every little bit helps.
Thank you for your continued support of MATTHIASSON wines as we re-build our home and continue with the otherwise fantastic 2014 harvest. Our usual fall release will be announced in few short weeks. In the meantime, we encourage you to JOIN OUR WINE CLUB and purchase our other wines available on the website, including a special pre-release of the 2011 MATTHIASSON Red Hen Merlot, which will ship in the coming weeks.**
Very best,
Steve, Jill, the boys & the entire MATTHIASSON crew
PS Feel free to spread the word with #quakecuvee
I’m so impressed that they can put together an effort to help others in the midst of being significant victims of the quake themselves. I’m in.
Anne,
I’ve been volunteering at Napa Barrel Care for the past week, and am also one of the unfortunate vintners that have barrels stored at NBC. The staff there are great, and they have been inundated with support from wineries and people throughout the valley, but there is a long way to go. I don’t think I’ll be able to even access my barrels for another week or two. While I can see most are still on racks, leaning against the wall, the other side of the the aisle took the brunt of the earthquake. Its an extremely slow process, moving a single barrel at a time with heavy machinery, but it is progressing. Some wineries definitely suffered worse than others, so keep your fingers crossed that the wineries will be able to safely extract the majority of their barrels.
A few of us in SoCal are backing MATTHIASSON, led by FMIII, in this process and reloading. They’ve been big supporters of falltacular so it’s time to return the favor.
[quote=“Anne Ryan”]It looks like Modus Operandi has lost most if not all of the wine they had in barrels.
Just so the rest of you know, Jason Moore, owner/winemaker for Modus Operandi, started a small drive to collect a little money to feed the volunteers around Napa. It blossomed quickly.
HELP THESE BRAVE PEOPLE WITH THE LINK BELOW!!! PLEASE!
http://www.gofundme.com/napastrong
He arranged for meals to be delivered or has delivered them himself to the various wineries and wine storage facilities that were heavily hit. It maybe to keep his mind off his losses, but he’s put in about 16 hours a day since the earthquake and plans on continuing the meal deliveries until all the trashed wineries, storage facilities and other facilities in remote areas are cleaned up or stable. Friend him on Face Book and follow along.
Randy bless you and your better half and all the others in Napa. Having been through several large quakes here in LA I know what kind of havoc they can play. Hopefully all of the wineries and businesses affected will make it out whole.
And Jason posted yesterday on FB how one of his mailing list customers wanted to be taken off the list as he/she was offended by his asking for donations comparing it to subjecting coworkers to buying your kid’s girl scout cookies. I have known Jason and MO since the beginning and beyond being a good winemaker seems to be a genuine, caring guy. Shortly thereafter, on FB was a picture thanking Jason for bringing lunch for 75 volunteers at a barrel facility. It says something about his character that in the face of complete loss, he is working to support the community.
Ten boxes of Thin-Mints, please.
Sometimes you’re better off “firing” a customer.
I made a (albeit small) donation to Jason’s GoFundMe page–unfortunately that came onto my radar after I had bought extra wine from affected vintners, donated to the Food Bank, and bought some of Matthiasson’s “Quake Cuvee.” Tapped out now, but I did what I could.
From Buoncristiani:
As for Buoncristiani Family Winery, that’s a different story. The two warehouses where we store all of our finished wine in bottle sustained no damage, and luckily we did not lose a single bottle of wine there! The Caves at Soda Canyon, our winemaking home dug deep into the hillside, didn’t have a single bottle or barrel disturbed either. We were extremely fortunate in both regards.
On the less fortunate side, since only half of the Caves at Soda Canyon has been constructed yet, we have many overflow barrels at two different facilities in Napa, more than 200 to be exact. Both of these facilities sustained heavy damage. The small downtown winemaking facility (Walnut Street) we have been utilizing since 2001has been red-tagged, meaning no one is allowed to enter the building. The roof has collapsed. In fact the only thing holding the roof partially up is our stack of barrels (see photo above). I also had a good chunk of my personal wine library stored there that will probably be lost as well. Clearly I should have had far more dinner parties!
The other warehouse we utilize to store about 200+ barrels of ours, is Napa Barrel Care. They are home to barrels from close to 100 wineries in the valley, and of all the barrel houses I’ve seen, they’ve taken one of the hardest hits from this earthquake. I have hopes that several of our barrels have simply toppled over without breaking, but they expect the cleanup effort to take over a month. A huge heartfelt thank you to Mike Blom, Jorge Vargas, the staff at Napa Barrel Care and all the volunteers working tirelessly to recover the 15,000 barrels stored there.