Because the expansive panoramic view from Sodaro Estate Winery is so dramatic, it is often the most prominent feature in our guests’ initial observations of our unique property. That is of course until the massive doorway of our dual-chamber wine cave opens. Set within its ocher rock walls, which were formed by an ancient volcano, lies the nerve center of our winery operations.
The following excerpt appeared in the New York Times a few years ago after the completion of our wine cave construction, and offers some interesting history behind this fascinating feature.
The Industry: Cellar’s Market
By MATT LEE and TED LEE
Published: March 6, 2005
It was a few minutes after 7 in the morning, and Georges, 31, a project engineer for Glen Ragsdale Underground Associates, one of a handful of firms in the area licensed to dig wine-storage caves, was driving to a job for the motel magnate turned winery owner Don Sodaro. Georges pulled off the Silverado Trail onto a narrower road, past vineyards and horse farms. A wild turkey crossed in front of him, and he slowed the truck to a crawl.
”See that hill?” Georges asked, pointing to a golden bluff dotted with oaks. ”The tunnel’s inside that. The big appeal for a winemaker is that you can have a very large structure and it’s discreet — you can hide a lot of wine in there.”
Until recently, the only wine caves in the Napa Valley were the few dug in the 19th century by Chinese laborers using pickaxes and shovels. But thanks to Napa County’s zoning ordinances, more wine entrepreneurs have taken to digging underground, and the valley’s cave business is booming.
Invisibility is one component of a wine cave’s appeal, but there are other advantages to storing wine in the earth. The temperature, a more-or-less constant 57 degrees, eliminates the need for expensive heating and air-conditioning systems; and the humidity of a wine cave hovers around 85 percent, a fact Georges claims saves eight bottles per barrel of wine each year that would otherwise be lost to evaporation in above-ground warehouses. (At Sodaro’s cave, a relatively modest 3,000 square feet capable of storing 210 oak barrels, such savings would amount to 140 cases of wine a year.)
Georges’s team had been digging the Sodaro tunnel for three months, and the walls of the cave had been coated with their first layer of shotcrete. The crew leader drove the roadheader, scouring away at the cave wall — an ocher rock that was formed by an ancient volcano.
Read the full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/magazine/06INDUSTY.html?_r=1
