One hundred and sixty years of winemaking

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Product Description

This is the first comprehensive history of the wine industry in Napa Valley, the world's greatest wine-growing region. It includes the earliest settlersYankees, German, French, and Italian immigrants, and their efforts to make and market wines, describes the phylloxera infestation which nearly wiped out the vineyards in the late 1800s, the gradual development of fine quality wines which won international prizes. Prohibition and the Depression strongly affected the vineyards;some did not survive. The great boom in California wines after World War II climaxed in the 1970s, when European winemakers began buying vineyards or investing with California vintners to produce unique and magnificent wines of today. The great names are all here: Krug, Beringer, Schram, Tychson, Niebaum, de Latour, L. Martini, Mondavi, Trefethen, Hess, and many new winemakers, including a number of women.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #680687 in Books
• Published on: 1999-06-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 500 pages

Review
"...elegantly designed, and filled with the extensive detail and meticulous research for which Heintz is known in the wine industry." -- St. Helena Star

"Noone tells the wine story more authoritatively than Heintz." -- Napa Valley Register

From the Publisher
This book is a must for true wine buffs and history buffs alike. The wine industry is portrayed against a background of social history, immigration patterns, labor history, and contemporary trends, to give a full picture of the beautiful Napa Valley from the American conquest of California right down to the present day. Highly readableand a very beautiful book!

From the Inside Flap
Visitors touring California's Napa Valley might stop at any of the 200-plus wineries to taste new releases or older vintages of Cabernet, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel, or champagnes, savoring the rich, complex, fruity flavors of some of the finest wines produced anywhere in the world. They are tasting history along with the wine, for the two are inseparable. At the oldest wineries visitors can tour the limestone caves dug by Chinese laborers, admire the architecture of beautifully restored century-old buildings, and learn something about the pioneers of the wine industry, the men who built Napa Valley's great reputation, and whose names lend authority to today's wine labels. Later generations of winemakers have built on that reputation. Even at the newest wineries, where the very first vintages are offered for tasting, history resides in the fields where the grapes were grown, and in the long line of growers and winemakers who preceded the newcomers. Napa Valley is barely thirty miles long, and yet this small valley has dominated the American wine industry for at least a hundred years.

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Customer Reviews

The most informative book on Napa Valley
This is not a splashy picture book, but a thorough and highly informative history of wine making in the Napa Valley, from the earliest German, French and Italian vintners to the present. The book gives a history of the development of varietal wines in the prime wine region of America, or perhaps in the world. It is particularly interesting for its treatment of the Prohibition era, when wine makers resorted to astonishing measures to stay solvent. Handsome hardcover volume, very well designed, with excellent black and white illustrations.

Anthony
This one of the most entertaining books I've read about the region. Mr. Heintz paints a very colorful picture while introducing you to the more interesting facts concerning the areas history.