15 Million Gallons of Wine Lost in 1906 Earthquake

When the earth shook San Francisco awake at 5:12 a.m. on April 18, 1906, the city lost more than buildings. At least 15 million gallons of wine—roughly 75 million bottles—went up in flames or spilled into the streets. To put that in perspective, that's enough wine to fill about 24 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

San Francisco wasn't just a city in 1906. It was California's wine vault. The California Wine Association (CWA) and firms like Italian Swiss Colony controlled about 75% of the state's commercial wine inventory, all stored in massive brick warehouses south of Market Street. When the earthquake struck, it cracked vats, shattered bottles, and ignited fires that would rage for three days.

Rivers of Wine Through Burning Streets

As the fires spread, enormous wooden vats split open, sending rivers of red and white wine flooding through the rubble. Some survivors reported the surreal sight of wine mixing with water from broken mains, creating pink streams that ran downhill toward the bay.

The California Wine Association alone lost between 4.75 and 10 million gallons depending on the source. Italian Swiss Colony's losses topped 12 million gallons. When the smoke cleared, most estimates agreed: at least 15 million gallons were destroyed, though historian William Heintz suggests the city held closer to 35 million gallons total before the disaster.

Could Wine Have Saved the City?

Here's the tragic irony: firefighters ran out of water. Broken mains left hydrants dry while the city burned. Meanwhile, millions of gallons of liquid sat in vats just blocks away.

A 1985 report suggested that if authorities had deliberately broken open the wine vats, the alcohol might have provided emergency firefighting fluid. Whether wine could actually extinguish flames is debatable—alcohol is flammable, after all—but the desperate shortage of any liquid made people wonder what might have been.

The Aftermath Changed Everything

The wine industry didn't die in 1906. It relocated. With their San Francisco warehouses destroyed, wine companies moved operations north across the bay to Point Richmond, where they built Winehaven—briefly the world's largest winery.

• The complex could store 12 million gallons of wine
• It featured its own wharf for shipping directly to markets
• Production peaked before Prohibition killed it in 1920

The earthquake accidentally decentralized California wine. Napa and Sonoma valleys, previously just suppliers, began building their own storage and distribution networks. The disaster that destroyed 15 million gallons ultimately helped create the Wine Country we know today.

So yes, a catastrophic amount of wine was lost. But from those broken vats and burnt warehouses emerged a more resilient, geographically distributed industry—one that learned not to keep all its wine in one seismically active city.