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36 WINES&VINES May 2015 WINEMAKING A t the site of Northern California's oldest winery, years of work costing untold millions received an abrupt and violent test in the pre-dawn hours of Aug. 24, 2014. The severe shaking of a 6.0-magnitude earthquake woke Jean- Charles Boisset in his hilltop residence in Napa Valley as well as Tom Blackwood, who endured an even more violent experience in his west Napa home. After both men both made sure their families were safe, their thoughts imme- diately turned to Sonoma Valley and the Buena Vista Winery, which was founded in 1857. Boisset Family Estates, the company owned by Boisset's family, had just spent a fortune restoring the winery, and Blackwood—who has worked for Buena Vista for more than a de- cade—personally oversaw restoration of the dilapidated building into a working winery. Blackwood recounted that morning to Wines & Vines about six months later. A native San Franciscan, he said he was riding a bus on the Bay Bridge when a section of the bridge collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, yet he was more scared during the Napa quake. The fear turned to worry when he began thinking about the stone winery in So- noma. Those concerns were put to rest just after daybreak, when he heard from workers who arrived to find that the walls were still standing. "We had people here first thing in the morning, and the building had been tested, and it held up and it did wonderful and thank God," Blackwood said. Without the restoration, which was com- pleted in 2012, Blackwood is certain the win- ery would have been turned into a pile of rubble. "This would have been the story of the Buena Vista Winery Extensive renovation of the 'White House' of California's wine industry By Andrew Adams TECHNICAL SPOTLIGHT