Post 15. Napa and the Earthquake

Hi All,

As the title suggests, I am in Napa. I got here Saturday afternoon after a 6 hour drive up from the central coast. I took the long way along the coast. The road hugs the coast and winds around almost sheer drops into the ocean. Its spectacular scenery and there were a lot of people on the road with their go pro cameras hanging out the windows or bolted onto the front of their cars recording the trip. the road joins the coast at Moro Bay and heads north for about 100 miles to Monterey. The road goes through Big Sur which is a wooded stretch covered with big sequoias and redwoods.

Coast road near Big Sur

More coast road scenery

The town I'm staying in is Yountville. I'm in a house with two other guys, an Aussie grower liaison and a Kiwi cellarhand/eonologist. The whole Napa Valley smells of money and no penny is spared anywhere. Vineyards are immaculate, they look like they are almost landscaped, they are picture perfect, but if there is one place where the money smell is strongest, that's Yountville. I'm told millionaires and billionaires live and own houses in Yountville. I've never been in a town that is as clean, as manicured, as gentrified as Yountville. It is a town of 3000 with three bedroom duplexes costing a million dollars. It has a great restaurant scene and is smack bang in the heart of the Napa Valley. It is also very close to two of the vineyards I'm working at. Needless to say, the house we are in is awesome, and the company has looked after us extremely well.

House at Yountville

The first day on the job the Napa South vineyard manager showed me around and he took me to the Abbot vineyard in Carneros (a dozen km's or so south of Napa city). This is where the earthquake hit and where the fault line opened up. the photo's below tell the story better than I can tell it but in a couple of the shots below you can see where once straight rows are now out of alignment because of the shifting ground.



row with new "dogleg"



My boot in the fault

The fault continuing into the neighbours driveway

The crack you see above is the fault line that opened up. It goes unbroken for several kilometer's in either direction and originated 7 miles beneath the earth. There is a line of yellow vines that follows the fault line as well. The manager told me his neighbour lost a horse because it was standing on top of the fault and had a heart attack. He also told a story of a heap of media turning up at the vineyard a couple of days after the quake. The day before a contract crew had gone through and dropped a heap of diseased fruit on the ground. Anyway, someone was passing after the quake, saw the fruit on the ground and thought the quake had shaken all the fruit off the vines and contacted the media. Once they got hold of the story they were reporting massive crop losses in the Napa Valley due to the quake, which everyone in the know thought was hilarious.

I'll follow up tomorrow with another post

Bye

Scott