Chauffeur-tour guide Phil Boland wheeled the Napa Valley Wine Trolley into the parking lot next to the Oxbow Public Market, braked to a halt and shut ’er down.

Had a San Francisco cable car jumped its tracks and somehow made its way to wine country? Well, no. The 28-passenger trolley was hand-built in 1988 from the original 1900s cable car blueprints, but it’s welded to a truck frame and powered by a Ford V-8 engine. The doppelganger effect is striking, from the all-wood carriage to the brass rails.

It was Aug. 28, early in the grape harvest and only four days after the magnitude 6.0 earthquake had struck parts of the Napa Valley. The heavily damaged town of Napa was off-limits to traffic, altering the trolley’s usual route, but in general the mood in the valley seemed to be “business as usual.” Later reports would estimate the overall quake damage to top $400 million, much of it to the wine industry.

On this blue-sky day, though, the 11 eager wine trolley passengers queuing up to board weren’t thinking about the quake, but about their upcoming six-hour adventure.