The floods drastically damaged portions of Sonoma County, including wineries, tasting rooms and popular eateries.
Assessing the full extent of the damage will still take some weeks but nonetheless efforts to rebuild have begun.
‘Westside Farms was 100% underwater. Thankfully all the vines are dormant, so no damage has been found,’ the team at Ramey Cellars told Decanter.com.
‘Our neighbours, Graciana Winery didn’t fair as well. Their tasting room and wine storage area were flooded and sustained a lot of damage. They are working hard to get everything cleaned up in time for their April 1st season opening party.’
‘We did take on some water at [Kosta Browne] winery and are working on getting all of our operations back up and running,’ said Carol Reber, of Duckhorn Wine Company, which owns Kosta Browne winery.
‘We do not yet have power and believe it will take several more days to get it restored. Once that happens, we will have some work to do to return our production and hospitality spaces to their pristine condition and have a great team in place to handle this.
‘Fortunately, our 2017 wines are in fine condition and shipping now.’
‘We hope people will join us in providing whatever support they can to our neighbours at The Barlow who were disproportionately affected. They are nearly all small business owners and many of their situations are quite challenging,’ said Reber.
Restaurants and other local businesses were also affected, and are working on reopening their doors with a good amount of help from the close community.
Chef Jake Rand from the recently opened Koshō restaurant in Sebastopol said ‘The whole restaurant had to be gutted, we are awaiting permits to start again from the ground up.’
The whole community has rallied together to support each other.
‘It is an unfortunate disaster but it has truly brought the community together, hoping to see the wineries and restaurant up and going soon,’ said Rand.
‘The local community has helped Graciana a lot,’ said Ramey.
‘There are several GoFundMe campaigns and other efforts already launched to support [The Barlow],’ said Reber.
Editing by Ellie Douglas
