Earthquake Proofing Wine Cellar

Living in California, the thought of an earthquake is often in the back of my mind. Does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions on how to minimize the risk of bottles slipping out of the wooden racks as well as display racks that have the bottles displayed horizontally with the labels out?

I have always approached it fatalistically. I couldn’t come up with what I felt was a viable plan for bottle safety that preserved my desire for a harmonious look and feel to the cellar, so I have ignored the risk.

I used to keep wine stored in cardboard divider-boxes lying on their sides, stacked up to 4 high. I was in the bay area for the Santa Clara quake (so, good sized,) and only one bottle left its slip and it didn’t break. Contributing to my current Laissez-faire approach.

It will be interesting to see what other people have done!

All my wine storage has doors that close in front of the bottles. If the quake is bad enough to topple them I’m gonna be in a bigger mess than some broken wine bottles.

While my cellar is mostly a seismic disaster waiting to happen, I’ve added some precautions (which are likely futile):

  • Thick bungee cords to prevent the racks from toppling


  • Foam pipe insulation place over the cross bars on which the bottles rest, in the hopes this would provide cushioning, but especially friction to lessen the tendency of the bottles to shake free from their positions


  • On “Vintage View” racks, I’ve fabricated rubber straps.

However, I suspect one good shake and all of this would be for naught. Also, if it happens in a warm season, there will likely be ample and prolonged power outages to cook any surviving bottles.

I think the best earthquake preparedness for a wine collection is adequate insurance.

Cheers,
Warren

Like Brian, most of my racks are in cabinets with doors. The rest in Weinboxes to be stacked along a basement wall with some in horizontal 3 and 6 packs on top of the storage cabinets. The plan was to build new taller racking and revert the cabinets back to storage. I do like the doors on the cabinets, so will just build some additional above the old. They have been repositioned and screwed to the wall.
I’m getting old and re-tired, so now just waiting out the big one on the same side of the river so the bridges falling down aren’t so big a worry as when I worked on the other side. [whistle.gif]

No actuarial with an IQ any larger than that of a walnut would agree to insure a serious wine cellar in an earthquake zone at anything less than utterly confiscatory rates [like, say, $0.10 per $1.00 of valuation per year].

Anyone who would write you an “affordable” policy would be fronting such a badly overextended ponzi scheme that their firm would fold up like a cheap suit when The Big One actually struck.

Within 5 minutes, they’d be running off to Big Gubmint, begging for a multi-trillion-dollar bailout.

Though I cannot, of course, match Nathan’s extremeness in the saying of it, homeowner’s insurance typically doesn’t include earthquake coverage, or if you buy earthquake coverage, it’s expensive and there is a very high deductible. So I doubt insurance is going to help you with bottles lost in an earthquake.

Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, though.

I’m low tech. Zip ties and rubber O-rings on individual racking, rubber ties for vintage view (from the company), and I only put cheap stuff in the few X-bins that I have.

I’m even lower tech. Fingers crossed.

My cellar insurance with AIG covers loss due to earthquake up to my blanket coverage limit. The deductible is 10% of said limit.

I like the o-ring approach to holding the bottles in place in the racks. Simple and inexpensive.

Dumb question alert. What is it about that approach that keeps bottled safe/secure?

Jason, the bottles will slide out of any racking IF the motion of the earthquake moves the bottles/rack back and forth versus side to side. We lost most of our Araujo, Abreau, Bond and Gallica stored in cardboard because the bottles slid out of them in the last earthquake. Lost a bunch of Riesling in wood racks during our last earthquake that were damaged by bottles sliding out of wood racking 3 feet away.

We had a guy come into the store about six months prior to the earthquake offering his invention of a Bottle Leash. It’s a metal bottle ring with a heavy duty rubber retention strap attached to the ring and the other end had a hole for a screw to attach it to the wine rack. QuakeGuardian.com. He showed up two days after the earthquake to see if we wanted to buy them now. They would have saved those bottles we had in wood wine racks. For somebody who has a smaller cellar with racking they would be very good. Useless for us as a business because of overall cost and time consumption. Shoppers want to pull bottles out of a rack, not have to figure out how to the bottle leash of.

You people don’t seem to understand that if and/or when The Big One strikes, all of these insurance companies are going broke.

They’ll head off to DC, and dump what money they have remaining into paying lobbyists to sell sob stories to congressmen, and then cross their fingers and aim for the fences and take a great big swing at that multi-trillion-dollar bailout.

Hopefully the day will come when the American people finally put down their collective feet, and say, “No mas”, to the privatization of profits & the socialization of losses.

But I guess no one ever went broke misunderestimating the intelligence of the average voter.

Or the corruption of the average congressman.

My policy covers it. I don’t see State Farm going away in my lifetime, but who knows?

Cheers

Warren

Warren, what is your deductible and how much a month?

there is a far easier, cheaper, low tech way to protect wine in racks. Nothing is earthquake proof, just resistant.
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It’s a rubber band.

That’s genius. If I hadn’t already zip tied rubber O-rings to everything, I would definitely try that.

The bottle will not slide out of the rack. The o-ring prevents the bottle from ejecting. Now you also need to strap your racks to the wall so that the rack doesn’t tip over.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. The rubber band looks like a great cost effective idea! The O-rings look to be a great idea as well. In regards to the vintage view rubber ties, which company did you get them from? I may also look into insurance out of curiosity but sounds like premiums might not make it worthwhile. Thanks again - some great suggestions and ideas from everyone.