About Napa Valley

For those of us who live in San Francisco, it is only an hour’s drive north into the famous Californian wine country.   I didn’t know much of California wine initially, as I had grown up drinking Italian and French wines with my family.  I had heard that Californian wine was very good, and sometimes I would say – “I should give it a chance”, so I would go to the supermarket and buy a $5 wine and, then drink it and not be impressed.  When I started going up to Napa Valley, I started discovering very good wines.  My conclusion now: I don’t really dislike Californian wine – Maybe I dislike some $5 wine?

There can be no doubt that many of the best U.S. wines come from Napa Valley.  The thirty-mile valley showcases over two hundred wineries, and has long been synonymous with natural beauty, a comfortable lifestyle, and world-class wine.

The United States is the world’s fourth largest producer of wine, and almost every State produces it.  80% of the nations wine comes from California, however only 4% come from Napa Valley.  The entire area is only about 35,000 acres (14,000 hectares), and could fit inside the Chianti region five times.  The vast majority of California’s wine comes from the Central Valley or the Central Coast.  The focus of many wineries in this region are to produce large amounts of wine, and the region has something that Napa Valley does not – some of the darkest, richest and best soil in the country.  This, along with a lot of water, makes the vines produce huge, juicy grapes.  These are very suitable for eating, but watery grapes produce watery wine.  The result are several wines which usually sell for about $7 a gallon, the most famous being White Zinfandel, which is given very little contact time with the skins during fermentation, giving it a light pink color.

Napa Valley, on the other hand, contains poor rocky soil, and one feature of this soil is that it drains very easily.  This forces the roots of the vines to burrow to the existing clay bed in their search of water, which gives the resulting wine many “earthy” flavors.  The more than 140 different soil varieties that, along with dozens of microclimates, give Napa an extraordinary range of wines produced with its boundaries.

The Northern and middle part of the Valley is planted with Bordeaux Varietals such as Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Sauvignon Blanc, as it benefits from a hot and dry summer, with temperatures in the 90’s (around 40 degrees Celsius) and often not a drop of rain from March to October.  The “Carneros”, or southern part of the valley is much cooler because of its proximity to the north end of the bay.  Constant winds, as well the fog that San Francisco is famous for keep the area cooler, and as a result, the area is known for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.

Napa Valley is separated from Sonoma Valley by a mountain range, called by its highest peak, Mt.Veeder.  Up here the vines are “dry-farmed” meaning that they get no water for the entire season.  This forces the roots to go down very deep, often in excess of forty feet (15 meters).  Los Carneros and Mt. Veeder are just two of the Valley’s fifteen appellations.  Other noteworthy appellations are Stag’s Leap and Rutherford, which are known for world-class Cabernet Sauvignon, and Spring Mountain, known for producing top quality merlot.

The Napa Valley makes wines in a distinct style that is not found anywhere else.  They take advantage of the long growing season and produce wines that taste very ripe, and full-bodied, usually with 1-2% residual sugar.  They often believe in tasting more “fruit” and and less oak.  The wines aren’t cheap however, with some of the regions best wines costing as much as a Barolo or Brunello di Montalcino.

The original inhabitants to the Valley were the Onasti, which arrived about 6,000 years ago.  They were decimated by Smallpox as Mexican soldiers arrived, claiming California for Mexico in the 1820’s.  It was at this time that the first grapes were planted by George C. Yount, a white settler that acquired land as he married the daughter of a rich landowner named Mariano Vallejo.  The area changed hands again in 1847, as a prize in the Mexican-American wars.   Nine days after California became part of the United States, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in the close-by Sierra Nevada Mountains.  This brought in hundreds of thousands of settlers into Central California over the next couple of years (affectionately known as the 49ers.)  Many people followed Yount’s example and by 1900, there was over one million gallons of wine produced between Napa and Sonoma Valleys.

This came abruptly to an end with the onset of Prohibition.  From 1919 to 1933, alcohol was illegal in the U.S., and as a vineyard is a difficult thing to hide from the law, most of the wineries left to pursue more lucrative crops in other parts of the country.  Some stayed making wine, brandy, and sherry illegally, and a few wineries were allowed to stay open making sacramental wines for the church.  Others switched what they were doing with the grape, for example making grape juice, raisins, or vinegar.  I remember being shown a bottle of grape juice from prohibition times, and if you turned it around and read the back label, it read: “Warning – please do not add two tablespoons of Flor yeast and a quarter cup of water,” which of course are the exact instructions how to make wine.  This is one way that producers were able to get around the laws of the time.  I sure the wine did not taste very good, but at least it was wine.  These were particularly lean times for farmers in the area, as no matter how good your grape juice is, no one will pay more than a couple of dollars for it, by today’s standards.

After prohibition ended, the area was devastated and abandoned.  Trees started to grow in the vineyards and reclaim the land, while many of the old stone wineries and cellars deteriorated.  From the 1930’s to the 1960’s the valley saw little or no action.  In 1966, Napa Valley’s most famous resident, a Robert Mondavi moved in and planted Cabernet Sauvignon.  In 1969, his Cab won first place – best wine in California.  Several vintners moved back in to try making wine again.