Napa Valley is a roughly 30-mile-long valley (see video overview) about an hour’s drive north of San Francisco. The combination of warm and cool conditions is ideal for grape-growing. Different grapes flourish in different areas of the valley depending on their optimal growing conditions.
> Explore the wineries of Napa Valley with an interactive map of its hundreds of wineries, vineyards, and tasting rooms. (More)
> Napa Valley has unique growing conditions, a quality the wine industry refers to as "terroir." (More)
The Indigenous Wappo people originally inhabited the area. Their practices, like controlled burns of dry brush, helped shape the land's fertility for future agriculture. In the 19th century, European settlers arrived and kick-started the valley’s wine industry, with the area’s first commercial winery opening in 1861.
> Napa Valley was the second officially sanctioned wine-growing region in the US. (More)
> The Charles Krug Winery is the oldest winery in Napa Valley. (More, w/video)
> The 19th-century Gold Rush and its sudden influx of European residents helped turn California's Napa Valley into wine country. (More, w/podcast)
Napa has over 400 wineries that employ upward of 44,000 people and draw around 4 million annual visitors. Despite its outsized influence in California wine, Napa produces only 4% of the state’s annual wine production.
> Wildfires and rising temperatures have seriously affected Napa's winemaking in the 2020s. (More)
> View a detailed list of Napa Valley wines, dating all the way back to the 1991 vintage. (More, w/map)
Discover more:
> A root lice infestation, transported from the East Coast, once destroyed around 70% of Napa's vines. (More)
> Napa Valley became a player on the international stage in the mid-1970s, when judges in a blind taste test deemed its wine superior to France's. (More)
> A 1980s soap opera helped popularize Napa Valley, broadcasting the idyllic wine country to millions of American viewers every week. (More)
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