View a detail list of the Napa Valley wines, dating all the way back to the 1991 vintage.

Explore the wineries of the Napa Valley with an interactive map of its hundreds of wineries, vineyards, and tasting rooms.

One expert said Napa's 2023 vintage was one of its best

Karen MacNeil, author of "The Wine Bible," called it “as perfect as any Napa vintage in living memory,” and suggests the wines will only become more impressive with age.

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.

California's Napa Valley and Sonoma County both produce world-class wines, but they have key differences.

Food & Wine magazine's guide to the Napa Valley (and its next-door neighbor, Sonoma Valley) walks through the environmental and geological conditions that differentiate these two first-class wine regions from the rest of the world and from each other. It also includes in-depth explanations of what to look for in their wines, including common grapes, stylistic choices, and tasting notes.

Experts say 2023 was a welcome year for Napa's wine

Many vintners say Napa’s 2023 vintage was a landmark year due to plentiful rain and a lack of extreme weather events, particularly extreme heat, which can stunt grapevine photosynthesis. The graph below illustrates the town of Calistoga's relatively cooler temperatures in 2023.

The 19th-century Gold Rush and its sudden influx of European residents helped turn California's Napa Valley into wine country.

The Napa Valley has unique growing conditions, a quality the wine industry refers to as 'terroir.'

A database of grape varieties

All wines are defined in part by the type of grapes used, whether a single grape or a blend. This encyclopedic archive of grape varieties and their respective attributes is an easy way to become acquainted with just about any wine grape out there—from Albariño to Zweigelt. It also includes brief introductions to non-wine alcoholic beverage categories like beer and hard seltzer.

Wildfires and rising temperatures have seriously impacted Napa's winemaking in the 2020s.

Napa Valley is an internationally known wine destination, but it only produces only 4% of California's wine.

California's Napa Valley, one of the wine world's most famous regions, is home to some of the most valuable agricultural land in the US.

Napa Valley was the second officially sanctioned wine-growing region in the US.

The Charles Krug Winery, established in 1861, is the oldest winery in the Napa Valley.

A 1980s soap opera helped popularize Napa Valley, broadcasting the idyllic wine country to millions of American viewers every week.

Red wine, 101

How does a bottle of red wine get to the table? In this podcast episode from VinePair, tastings director Keith Beavers covers this wide-ranging wine category. Learn about the entire process of red wine production, from grape to glass. The episode provides a great starting line for general wine knowledge and a jumping-off point into individual varieties or regions.

A blind taste test in 1976 determined that California produced better wine than France in a decision known as 'the Judgment of Paris' that realigned the wine world.

Mexican Americans have become a part of Napa's tradition

While the Napa wine world was largely homogenous for many decades, things are beginning to change. This short video highlights Mexican American winemakers in Napa, focusing on the story of Elias Fernandez of Shafer Vineyards. Fernandez began his wine journey as a migrant grape-picker and has been making wine for over 40 years. In 2008, his vintage won Wine Spectator’s Wine of the Year.

A root lice infestation, transported from the East Coast, once destroyed over 80% of Napa's vines.

The numbers on US wine consumption

Ever wonder how much wine the average American drank in 1949? Wonder no more! The answer is 0.89 gallons. That’s way less than 2022, where the number has quadrupled to 2.86 gallons. Check out this simple table that tracks average United States wine consumption from 1934 through 2022, by individuals and as a whole. American wine consumption peaked during the early pandemic but has lessened since then.

Visualizing California's wine production

While Europe has France, Italy, and Spain, the US has California. The bulk of US wine production takes place in the Golden State, accounting for roughly two-thirds of the United States’ nearly 800 million gallons produced each year. This chart compares California and United States wine production from 1995 through 2022. Production in both has been trending down for several years, partially due to extreme weather events.