Power loss disrupts winery harvests
Generators are selling fast in Napa, Sonoma
Wineries in Napa and Sonoma counties are still in the midst of harvest, which has been complicated by PG&E’s sweeping shutoff of power throughout Northern California. Wineries require power to run equipment used for crushing the grapes and to keep fermentation tanks cold. Many also need electricity to keep their tasting rooms open to the public, which is also the case for local breweries like Russian River Brewing Co.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a cofounder of the winery, hotel and restaurant business PlumpJack Group, mentioned the issue Wednesday during an unrelated billsigning ceremony in San Diego.
“I’ve got a bunch of businesses that are impacted,” he said, though he transferred control of all of his busi
nesses to a blind trust before becoming governor. “We’re in the middle of wine crush and folks are running around trying to get generators right now, in the middle of crush. I mean, it’s very consequential.”
Liesl Ramsay, owner of Leete Generators in Santa Rosa, which sells generators to many wineries and other businesses in the area, said Wednesday that she and her staff had been up since 1 a.m., when their phone started ringing with emergency requests.
“We cannot see straight,” Ramsay said. “It’s been a constant stream of calls for service.”
Leete doesn’t sell the plugin type of generator, so customers cannot just grab one and go. Installing a large one involves electrical work and often other construction work, Ramsay said.
That’s what winemaker Robert Morris found out when he decided to rent a generator for his business, Grand Cru Custom Crush in Windsor. Morris, who also works as a firefighter in Healdsburg, made the decision after he heard from his station’s PG&E liaison that the threatened shutoffs were not just a rumor. Since Sept. 1, he said he has spent $40,000 on rental fees and installation costs. In addition, the generator costs $1,500 per 24 hours to run.
“With $8 million of inventory on hand and being right smack in the middle of harvest, I decided we better do this,” said Morris, who makes wine for about 20 different brands, much of which is about to peak in fermentation, a process that generates a lot of heat. “We need to keep them at a set temperature. We can’t just let them go wild.”
Morris spent the night at his winery and kept waking to see if the power was out. The winery finally lost power at 3:45 a.m. and his generator went into action soon after, which was good timing because he had two tanks of Cabernet grapes and one tank of Pinot Noir to process that day, requiring power to run his crush equipment.
“Tanks are cold that need to be cold and tanks are hot that need to be hot,” he said. “In retrospect, it’s worth the investment.”
That was the same conclusion Natalie Cilurzo, coowner of Russian River Brewing Co., reached Wednesday. The brewery’s electrician got its rental generator powered on by 7:30 a.m., which allowed it to open the doors at its Windsor location for business on a beautiful fall day.
“We have the pub open, the gift shop is open, we’re even doing some tours today,” she said. “Since schools are closed and parents are home with the kids, we’re expecting a lot of people to come out today.”
The 2megawatt generator is roughly the size of the trailer of an 18wheeler and costs $30,000 for four weeks. Two of those weeks are already up, so Cilurzo is crossing her fingers that the outage doesn’t last much longer.
“This just isn’t the kind of thing we can afford to keep doing,” she said. “But it’s also something we can’t afford not to do.”
PG&E and electricians caution people against setting up a generator on their own. The kind that can power businesses or homes can’t just be plugged in, they say, and should be installed by experts. Chronicle staff writer Alexei Koseff contributed reporting
from Sacramento.