Submitted photo
Lights in an arcing tunnel at Jarvis Winery exemplify the art of the wine cave builder. Jarvis is among the most spectacular caves built in the Napa Valley. Its 45,000 square feet accommodate all aspects of the winery’s operation, including crushing, fermentation, bottling, labs, marketing, hospitality and barrel storage as seen here.
From nickel's edge to cutting edge - Napa Valley's wine cave boom
By John Lindblom
The Weekly Calistogan
It is a revolution that within the last 20 years has resulted in the conversion of hundreds of thousands of square feet of rock beneath the Napa Valley soil to wine caves at a staggering cash investment that runs into the billions.
So how and when did the frenetic move to this subterranean world begin?
Would you believe with a nickel in an incident involving Gil Nickel not long after he purchased Far Niente winery?
The year was 1981 and Nickel was exploring the possibility of replacing an antiquated wine storage building with a cave when he contacted St. Helena general contractor Alf Burtelson.
“Gil retained Alf to drive a 60-foot tunnel into the hard-rock side of a hill,” said Jim Curry, who succeeded Alf as the owner of Burtelson Construction, “but he was concerned about the reverberations from the blasting.
“So, Alf told Gil, ‘Look, I’ll stand a nickel on its edge and ...’
“They agreed that if the nickel remained upright when Alf’s crew blasted it would be OK to proceed. Well, the nickel remained upright and Alf completed his first cave.”
Since then Burtelson has expanded the 60-foot tunnel into 40,000 square feet of cave space for Nickel & Nickel and has converted thousands upon thousands more underground rock to caves for other Valley wineries.
“As his reputation grew, so did his client list,” Curry added. “He got the ball rolling.”
From a nickel’s edge, Napa Valley has moved to the cutting edge for wine-cave building in California’s winemaking regions and in the United States.
“They do it differently back east, but I would say that the people who are most competent in cave-building are in the Napa Valley,” said Dale Wondergem.
Builder of 60 caves
Wondergem should know. Working much of his career with Burtelson and later with Hawks and Hawks Wine Caves, he is credited with building as many as 60 of the Valley’s 160 or so wine caves. Steven Hawks believes no one knows more about cave-building than Wondergem.
“He’s built some of the largest, including Jarvis Winery and Clos Pegase,” said Hawks.
From 1981 to 1988, Burtelson was the only contractor in the Valley who built wine caves. “It was the mid-90s when wine just boomed and that’s when all the contractors came in,” Wondergem recalled. Hawks estimates that there are presently a half-dozen Napa Valley companies specializing exclusively in wine-cave building.
The building process of choice for the Valley — and, for that matter, most of the world — is the NATM (New Austrian Tunneling Method), which Wondergem said was first employed in the Valley in 1984.
Principally, it is a system that begins with layering an excavation with fiber-reinforced shotcrete to a thickness of two inches. As conditions dictate, additional shotcrete layers may be applied, as well as welded wire screen and rock bolts.
“It’s compression and works on the same principal as an eggshell,” said Hawks. “It’s the covering of eggshell that holds it altogether. If you can break an egg by squeezing it in your hand, you’re a better man than I.”
With few exceptions, the cost of building a cave ranges from $135 to $185 a square foot, which is a bargain.
“The cost of wine caves versus the cost of an above-ground building is maybe one third,” Curry said. “The Napa Valley has such stringent requirements about building along the Silverado Trail or along Highway 29 that in order for buildings to be architecturally pleasing, period-type buildings construction costs can be between $400 and $500 a square foot.
“That’s why caves are such a fantastic investment.”
The chief benefit, Wondergem pointed out, is reduced evaporation. Without a cave, evaporation from red wine results in a 10 percent loss in income over a two-year maturing process in surface storage facilities.
“Wine has to be topped off because it evaporates right through the barrel,” Wondergem said. “The evaporation rate is probably 60 percent less in a cave than it is in a refrigerated warehouse. That alone makes the cave pay for itself.”
Lower energy bills
The ideal conditions for wine storage are 55 degrees and 75 to 85 percent humidity. The mean temperature in a cave is a near-ideal 58 degrees and humidity ranges from 70 to 90 percent.
Lowered energy bills account for additional savings.
“Chateau Boswell has turned its air conditioner off,” said Hawks. “That’s a big deal nowadays when energy costs are going through the roof.”
A third factor in wine-cave cost efficiency is that the ground above the cave can be planted in vines, an important consideration when land is at a premium.
Another reason to build a wine cave, said Curry,
“They’re sexy! They’re all unique and they all have an architectural flair.”
Of the many wine caves he has built, Wondergem rates the expansive 45,000-square-foot one at Jarvis among the best. Every function of Jarvis’ business — from fermentation to marketing — is conducted in the tunnels of its cave.
“Kathryn Hall Vineyards is another (outstanding cave) and Chateau Boswell, but every cave has its own personality,” Wondergem added.
Chateau Boswell is the marquee cave built by Hawks, who favors it because it was constructed on natural ground.
‘Hardest rock ever’
It was a rare occurrence because the ground in the Napa Valley area is mostly weathered, decomposed, faulted and jointed rock with varying amounts of soil, making it difficult to work. An example to the extreme is the cave Hawks is building for Barnett Vineyards on Spring Mountain.
“It varies from foot to foot; you never know what you’re going to run into,” he said. “We started on good ground at Barnett, but it just kept getting worse and worse. It is the hardest rock I’ve dealt with because you can’t excavate it. We used a roadheader that runs at 1,000 to 7,000 psi and we used a jackhammer, but nothing and nobody can cut the rock there. You hit the rock there, it rings, it actually rings!”
Said Curry, “You’re up against nature and you can only do what the mountain will allow you to do.”
As a concept that came from France and was first undertaken by the Chinese crews after they finished the transcontinental railroad, wine-cave building in the Napa Valley has globally historic roots. And they’re traceable. As Wondergem noted, “In ‘82 we did a wine cave at Schramsberg. You can’t tell which tunnels we dug and which ones the Chinese dug.”
The industry will make a lot more history before it flames out.
“The market is still here,” said Hawks. “What I see is that it’s going to be expanding.”