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Napa Valley Wine
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It was the Napa Valley that earned most of California’s wine fame both inside and outside the United States from the mid 19th century on.
The first generation of owners and winemakers began the climb to prominence between 1880 and 1919. But the success of the region today is more so directly related to a handful of dedicated wineries that stuck it out in the lean years following the repeal of prohibition. Between 1933 and 1966, when the California wine industry was ebbing out of significance, winemakers such as Beaulieu Vineyard, Inglenook, Christian Brothers, Charles Krug, and Louis M. Martini continued their pursuit of making quality wines when a majority of other regions were only interested in creating commodity products sold in bulk. This handful of cellars produced the memorable Cabernet Sauvignons of the 1940s and 1950s, the wines upon which Napa's modern prestige rests. Smaller operations such as Heitz, Stag's Leap Wine Cellars, Diamond Creek, Caymus, and Schramsberg rounded out the modern picture once the success of the two original boutique wineries, Mayacamas and Stony Hill, opened up the gate for the small artisan model in the late 1950’s. A telling signal to the state of current affairs however becomes clear when one considers that of the more than fifty new wineries started immediately after repeal, only Louis M. Martini, the Cesare Mondavi family at Charles Krug, and the small local Nichelini winery are still owned by the same families. And only Beaulieu, Beringer, the Christian Brothers, and Inglenook Vineyards join with them in having operated continuously since 1933 (though with changes from family to corporate ownership). The runaway success of Napa’s wines has been a mixed blessing, being the one, among the world's great winegrowing districts, to be closest to a major metropolitan area. It has meant that commercialism abounds, investors arrive and leave frequently, and with such a limited amount of property available, prices have tended to rapidly move Napa Valley wine further away from the agricultural category and more toward a fine art sphere. Terroir/Climate/GeographyThe Napa Valley proper is a long, lazy arc with its foot in San Francisco Bay and its head on the shoulder of Mount St Helena. Like most of the north-south valleys around San Francisco Bay, it has a cool end at the bay and a warm one away from it, although it is barely more than 40 miles end to end, and sometimes less than a mile wide. Napa is climatically varied, and the northern part, around Calistoga, is significantly hotter than southern districts such as Yountville and Carneros. There are also marked differences between the low bench lands flanking the valley floor and the mountainside vineyards high above. Given the heterogeneity of the region, the Napa Valley AVA is way too broad to be much use by itself. Sub-regional designations are more important. Overall, the mountains are cooler than the valley floor, and the valley floor is cooler in the south than in the north. The mountains on the west get more rain than the mountains on the east. It is unlikely that anyone will ever troop through the Napa Valley making confident generalities about the soils as they do in the Medoc or along the Cote d'Or. One of the most beautiful maps of the valley ever drawn shows more than 30 basic soil types. It dates from 1935 return to top
Winegrowing RegionsIt wasn’t until the 1980’s that the Napa Valley began to be divided into smaller sub-appellations. Areas such as Carneros, the Stags Leap District, Oakville, Rutherford, Mount Veeder, Howell Mountain, Yountville and Spring Mountain are now all official AVA’s, although by regulation, both the name Napa Valley and the subappellation names appear on labels simultaneously.
See also: Stags Leap District - Rutherford -
Oakville -
Yountville
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