The damage of a massive earthquake that rocked the southern island of New Zealand last November has finally been assessed, and it’s shocking. A whopping 5 million liters of wine has been lost.
But even worse, over 60 million liters worth of stainless steel tank capacity was damaged, posing some serious problems for the 2017 vintage. As Rural News Group reports, the 7.8 magnitude earthquake took place at 12:02 AM on November 14th and lasted for two minutes and twenty seconds. But the energy was immense. In fact, “the intensity was the same as eight million tonne of TNT exploding, or 40 atomic bombs.”
Many wines in the Marlborough area were moved after the quake to avoid aftershock effects. 1785 aftershocks were felt in the region between the quake date and January 16th. While five million liters sounds enormous, the report also found that said 5 million liters comprises a mere 2 percent of the country’s annual production.
