The cover headline of Wines & Vines’ September 2010 issue, “Lessons From Chile’s Quake,” stood over an almost incomprehensible photo of barrel stacks at a Colchagua Valley winery that had collapsed into a giant Jenga puzzle. The article by freelance writer Deborah Grossman, who was in Chile during the magnitude-8.8 earthquake there in early 2010, analyzed the damage to Chilean wineries and quoted experts’ advice about how wineries in Chile and around the world could avoid much of the damage next time around.

The earthquake that rocked southern Napa Valley and parts of Sonoma and Solano counties in California on Aug. 24 brought that issue to mind immediately when, within hours, we began seeing photos on Twitter of barrel room catastrophes that looked identical to those in Chile four years ago.