Wine cave
The history of wine cave construction in the United States dates back to the 1860s in Sonoma, and the 1870s in the Napa Valley region.
Eight years later, Schram found new employment for the Chinese laborers who had recently finished constructing tunnels and grades over the Sierra Nevada Mountains for the Union Pacific Transcontinental Railroad.
He hired them to dig a network of caves through the soft Sonoma Volcanics Formation rock underlying his vineyard.
The workers used pick-axes and shovels – and on occasion, chisel steel, double jacks and black powder – to break the soft rock.
From the 1890s until the early 1970s no new wine caves were built in the United States, with many existing ones being abandoned or falling into disrepair over time.
In 1991, Condor Earth Technologies Inc. joined with Alf Burtleson on the design and construction of the elaborate Jarvis Wine Cave project.
Recently constructed caves contain commercial and private kitchens, wine libraries, concert and exhibit halls, staff offices, elevators, restrooms, and other amenities.
Some have high-end interiors, including ceramic and stone flooring, masonry-lined walls and ceilings, sculpture and artwork, mood lighting, fountains, waterfalls, and chandeliers.
At Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, a Foucault pendulum swings continuously across a bed of black sand in the central exhibit hall.
The challenge for the design and construction of most wine caves is to create a fairly wide span in weak rock with low cover.
As the ground surface slopes upward, providing more cover and usually sounder rock, caves can accommodate multiple drifts.
Room and pillar layouts, similar to underground mine design, provide an economical construction arrangement.
The spoils behind the roadheader conveyor belt are dumped on the invert and mucked out using a rubber-tired skid loader or a load-haul-dump (LHD) mining machine.
At the portals, soil nail and shotcrete walls are typically used for permanent support and are constructed from the top down in lifts.
A minimum of 2 inches (5 cm) thickness of wet mix shotcrete is applied around the exposed ground perimeter following each day’s advance.
As cave dimensions and ground conditions require, additional layers of shotcrete and welded wire fabric follow on subsequent days.
After the cave complex has been completely excavated, waterproofed, and initially supported, a 2 inches (5 cm) thickness of final shotcrete or plain/colored gunite is applied to the walls and arch.
Utility conduits and piping are encased within the final layer of shotcrete in the walls and arch and placed under the concrete floor slab.
