Wine Country Takes Hit from Quake
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: And good morning. I'm Carol Costello. Thank you so much for joining me. Checking some top stories for you now at 10:30 Eastern time. It is official. Burger King is taking its headquarters north of the border. The fast food chain has announced a multi-billion dollar merger with Canadian doughnut and coffee maker Tim Hortons. While the deal won't affect what you pay for a Whopper it will help lower the company's tax bill. Home prices continue to rise but the pace seems to be slowing. Home prices from every city measured by the S&P Case Schiller Home Price Index showed slower gains. The first time that's happened in more than six years and the data continues to be mixed with new home sales dropping and existing home sales rising in the month of July. New drone video shows building facades crumbling in downtown Napa. After Sunday's earthquake, will winemakers' profits also be crumbling in this famed grape-growing region? And what about the cost of your favorite bottle of Merlot? CNN's Kyung Lah takes a look.</s>KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESONDENT: Across Napa Valley, forklifts recover wine barrels and winemakers like Mike Drash are getting the first look at the damage. We're warned to move fast and get out. Here's why. Barrel after barrel, entire stacks of them, precariously tilting.</s>JAY SCHUPPERT, WINEMAKER: There's a big pile that's stacked up back there where they have fallen off the racks.</s>LAH: This is Drash's precious 2012 vintage.</s>MIKE DRASH, WINEMAKER: Yes, that's my barrel line.</s>LAH: Each of these worth $10,000 to $24,000.</s>DRASH: These are full. That's really dangerous right there.</s>LAH: There's some white wine on the ground but until he can get all the barrels out and see them, Drash just won't know what he's lost. It took him two years to go from grape to wine; now, in the balance after the short but powerful quake.</s>DRASH: It's unbelievable. Just in ten seconds, right, 15 seconds. Yes, yes. It's making me nervous here too.</s>LAH: Drash isn't just a winemaker in Napa Valley. This is the historic home he owns near downtown Napa dating back to the 1800s.</s>DRASH: Pretty much everywhere you look there's a crack -- (inaudible) crack.</s>LAH: How Drash recovers from all this and as well as everyone in his neighborhood and city -- like everything in Napa, it comes down to the wine. There is spotty damage across the city to what's already been bottled, like in this Ahmed Couscous (ph) wine storage room. How many bottles are we talking about here?</s>AHMED, WINEMAKER: Hundreds and hundreds. I would say maybe over a thousand bottles.</s>LAH: Vineyards like Sebastiani Winery and Sonoma saw 19 of its wine tanks damaged. But in many vineyards like Cuvaison Winery, they are optimistic they can absorb this earthquake's damage and it won't have a lasting impact on California's wines.</s>SCHUPPERT: It hurts, but you know, we're in agriculture. We're dealing with these things vintage by vintage. We only have one shot at making wine every year and then we move on. And Mother Nature sometimes plays a role.</s>LAH: 90 percent of the wine in the United States is produced right here in California. So will this disaster affect the price of your wine? Well it depends what you want to drink. The bigger wineries will probably be able to absorb the cost. It's the smaller ones -- the independent ones that could truly struggle. Kyung Lah, CNN, Napa, California.</s>COSTELLO: I'll be right back.