Wine bottle stacking and Earthquakes

I bought a wine cabinet yesterday that has racking for 468 bottles and extra space above for stacking larger diameter bottles (sparkling, Turley, large formats) or just 100 more normal size bottles. Living in California the subject of earthquakes, regardless of how rarely a significant one strikes, is always something to consider. All these wines stacked on top of each other could dislodge and come crashing down in the event of a large significant shaker.

Have any of you who live in earthquake country given thought to this? What do you do to mitigate any possible damage instances? Do you just not stack bottles? One of my initial thoughts is to tilt the racking on top so that the bottles lean towards the back of the cabinet. It would reduce the capacity by maybe 20 bottles but is that really going to work or just artificially lower my guard?

I’m interested in your thoughts.

Brian,
I purposely did not use bins in my construction. I used to be risky and stack a few bottles on top of the racks but now I have enough space that I don’t need to do that. I keep my most valuable bottles on the lowest rows. I’m in the process of building shelves for my OWC boxes, and I’m going to put a lip on each shelf so things don’t easily slide off. For now, they’re stacked on the floor.

I recently purchased the wine insurance through the CellarTracker link and that also has earthquake coverage.

Most of all, I just hope that I am far enough away from the epicenter you have significant shaking.

While it wouldn’t help in a big earthquake, is there a way you can strap your new cabinet to a major beam or stud to give you some protection?

Thanks Bruce. I’m already looking for ways to attach the cabinet to the wall. The bottles when stored double deep come within an inch of the doors so forward backward movement will be little. I’m more worried about side to side causing the stacks to become unstable.

I went though the 2011 East Japan earthquake while living in Tokyo, which was 200 miles from the epicenter. I lost only a few bottles despite major damage to our 13th floor apartment. (All my glasses were broken along with most of our porcelain, TVs, stereo equipment, etc. The key was that almost all my bottles were in cartons on the floor. The few bottles I had stored on shelves fell off and broke. Now we are living in Seattle, where I continue to store most of my wine on the floor at ground level with those on shelves in cartons that are prevented from sliding by strategically placed nails. I would second the recommendation to anchor any tall wine cabinets that could tip over or any other cabinets that might fall on top of your wine. As suggested, they would need to be connected to a stud as anything screwed into the dry wall will pull out as I found out when I lost all my Riedel glasses.

Thanks Luke. This cabinet is in the garage which is a metal building so wall studs are large and accessible. The trick is using suitable brackets whose fasteners will not damage the cabinet seeing that it is wood/insulation/wood from inside to outside.

I find it so interesting how many people here obsess about keeping wines stored below 60 degrees for theoretical perfection decades from now, yet stack their bottles in ways that would doom them in an earthquake. California, Oregon, and Washington have real chances for real devastation.

I keep wines in a basement root cellar in wood boxes, not OWCs, my wines don’t generally come in OWCs, but any wood boxes I get from the local shops or Costco. I’ll wrap every other bottle in a sock, or place thin strips of cardboard in between each bottle, and have a cardboard layer in between each level in the box. I cut out tops of thin plywood for covers (boxes in shops never come with the original tops), and then I nail them shut. The boxes are stacked on industrial shelving, and the shelving is secured to the wall. I have a few bungee straps to keep the boxes from sliding off the shelves, but I’m thinking about getting some large cargo nets instead.

I realize it’s ugly, and it makes retrieving all but the few open cases of wines open for daily drinkers a total pain in the ass. And I think about having a ‘real’ cellar probably every day. But, my current storage system makes it more unlikely to drink wines too young (since retrieving them can be laborious), and I really think I could have tons of boxes fall from top shelves, and I think most of the bottles wouldn’t break. Maybe I should test it with some old bottles filled with water.

I’ve wanted to make a thread on this topic for a long time, and I guessing I’m not a Wine Berserker as much as I’m a Wine Prepper. I’ve honestly thought about lining my cellar walls with chicken wire too in case someone gets into my house and tries to break into the cellar. Screw the ‘valuables,’ I’m protecting my wine first. Thieves can have my TV and first generation iPad.

Brian, can you shoot a picture? With your mountain man skills, you could just build some additional racks to sit on top. I’m in agreement with you that those loosely stacked bottles could be at risk. I keep my wine in a commercial locker, packed pretty tightly in cardboard boxes behind a strong metal door. So unless the building comes down, or the lockers fall over, they should be fine. But I admit that I’m paranoid enough that when I’m working on inventory I worry that will be the time when an quake hits. If I walk away for even a few minutes, I shut the door [wow.gif]

I was living in San Francisco in 1989 and I remember that the Wine House, then on Bryan Street, south of Market in an area with soft soils and a lot of damage to old masonry buildings, lost almost nothing. They had OWCs stacked eight or ten high. They were so heavy and stable that they withstood the shaking. Of course, that’s not the most accessible storage format.

The earthquake in '89 was 6.9. The subduction zone quake due in the Pacific NW is supposed to 8.5 or 9

Could you rig a safety net across the front of the bottles so if they shift and are leaning on the door, when you open it they would be caught by the net?

And SF was some distance from the epicenter. Still, it was enough to collapse a number of buildings on fill, and the Wine House was in an old brick building. Obviously in a more severe quake, all bets are off. My point was just that in a quake that did substantial damage, stacked wood boxes were stable. At 8.5 or 9, wine would be the last of my worries.

We in California do not have basements and/or root cellars. Therefor I am attempting to make the best use of my limited temp controlled storage.

I’ll snap a shot when I get home.

Innovative idea there, I’ll have to give that some thought.

Don’t forget Oklahoma!~

Well come on, the wineries in Napa don’t secure their stacked barrels. I think you should just let them fly and then it will be a status symbol to talk about how much wine you lost during the great quake of '17.

Makes me wonder if I need some sort of tray under my wine cellar (stand-up 450 bottle unit) to catch the wine that would pour out if some bottles broke. The cellar is in a room where I wouldn’t care about the appearance, but I WOULD care if the floors were affected.

I would think if the world was shaking bad enough that bottles inside your cellar that didn’t even fall were breaking, wet floors might be the least of your worries.

I would lose an amazing amount of wine, likely in addition to my life, if the Juan de Fuca subduction cataclysm happens.

During the Napa quake we were lucky to only lose a couple cases of inexpensive wine even though we were just a few miles from the epicenter, due to a few factors:

  • the seismic waves came parallel to our wine racks (most are 12 feet high), so the racks basically ‘rode the wave’… Total luck.
  • our President had made the decision just months before to bring in contractors to add extra bracing at the top of the racks and connect them to the ceiling beams to reduce chances of a domino effect if one rack ever failed.
  • all single bottles in our racks are in custom-made cardboard boxes which are slightly tilted back - bottles loaded punt first.

That last point is likely why we didn’t have more single bottles jump out of our racking.

My cellar has bulk/stacked storage at the top and bottom. The lower storage would be fine. But the top storage is kind of precarious/loose due to my packing in as much as I can. It wouldn’t take to much shaking to cause some significant shifting around. And I’ve seen how fragile a bottle can be getting bumped around. Sometimes they seem tough as nails and others the fall apart from a bump (flawed bottle). So I wouldn’t expect them all to break, but it would be possible that a couple go and make a big mess.

I guess I just need to drink more of those bottles located in the top storage area…