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Napa Valley History
Napa: The Transformation of an American Townby Lauren Coodley Paperback. 160 pages. 2004. "This book goes beyond the myth of Napa as a tourist destination and tells the real history of the town, based on interviews and primary research. The author includes stories of labor history, social movements, and the impact of development on small town America. You will never see Napa the same way again after reading this amazing book!" - An Amazon Reader.  The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson Paperback. 100 pages. 2000. In July of 1879, Robert Louis Stevenson received word that his future wife's divorce was almost complete, but he was seriously ill. Dropping everything he left Scotland and traveled to Monterey in California. Penniless, in broken health, and his writing career in tatters, he was nursed back to health by his doctor, his nurse, and his future wife. His father then provided him money to help and he married. Still too weak to undertake the journey back to Scotland, he spent an unconventional honeymoon in a shanty in a derelict mining camp. This is his story of their time in the shanty. Stevenson at Silverado, The Life and Writing of Robert Louis Stevenson in California's Napa Valley - 1880 by Anne Roller Issler Paperback.1996  Napa Valley's Natives by Richard H. Dillon Paperback. 111 pages. 2001.  Ghost Wineries of Napa Valley by Irene W. Haynes Paperback. 1995 Old Napa Valley by Lin Weber Paperback. 320 pages. 1998. This is the lively, action-packed story of the founding of California's premium wine-growing region, from Gold Rush days to the end of the 19th Century. Included are detailed descriptions of life among the original Native American inhabitants; the first pioneers; the Bear Flag Revolt; the Mexican-American War; the Napa Valley during the Civil War; the Victorian Age, the start of the wine industry, and much, much more. First in a three-part series. Roots of the Present by Lin Weber Paperback. 340 pages. 2001. Weber's ground-breaking research covers the "lost era" between 1900 and 1950, including the Berryessa Oil Rush, the 1906 earthquake, WWI, the influenza epidemic of 1918, the Ku Klux Klan, Prohibition and the Napa Valley bootleggers,WWII, the rebirth of the wine industry and much more. Second in a three-part series. Lin Weber has lived in the Napa Valley since 1971 and is also the author of Old Napa Valley: The History to 1900.  California's Napa Valley: One Hundred Sixty Years of Wine Making by William Heintz Hardcover. 500 pages. 1999. This is the first comprehensive history of the wine industry in Napa Valley, the world's greatest wine-growing region. It includes the earliest settlers --Yankees, 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 1970's, 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. William Heintz has spent three decades collecting and writing the history of wineries and winemaking, conducting countless interviews with old-timers and the exciting newcomers in the industry, tracing historical records and old newspaper accounts. Mr. Heintz is acknowledged as the leading wine historian in Northern California. Napa Wine : A History from Mission Days to Present by Charles L. Sullivan , Earl Thollander (Illustrator) Hardcover. 460 pages. 1994. Napa Valley has been recognized as the premier wine producing area of California since the 1870s. This is the first study that explains how Napa acquired this unique reputation. The soils, climate, grape and human resources that have built this panorama of viticultural excellence over 160 years are explored. The author has visited every historic sight and talked with every living history resource as well as dug into original documents and periodicals. Published in cooperation with the Napa Valley Wine Library, scholarly attention is given to every detail. The modern wine lover will appreciate the connection between the original vineyards and today's great wine producers. Fascinating for any wine aficionado or history buff. Historic maps, charts of vineyard ownership and vintages from the 1880s to present. Robert Mondavi by Cyril Ray Paperback. 171 pages. 1986. An autobiography of famed vintner Robert Mondavi. Bottled Poetry : Napa Winemaking from Prohibition to Repeal by James T. Lapsley Hardcover. 1996. California's Napa Valley is one of the world's premier wine regions today, but this has not always been true. James Lapsley's entertaining history explains how a collective vision of excellence among winemakers and a keen sense of promotion transformed the region and its wines following the repeal of Prohibition. Focusing primarily on the formative years of Napa's fine winemaking, 1934 to 1967, Lapsley then concludes with a chapter on the wine boom of the 1970s, placing it in a social context and explaining the role of Napa vineyards in the beverage's growing popularity. Names familiar to wine drinkers occur throughout these pages. Beaulieu, Beringer, Charles Krug, Christian Brothers, Louis Martini, Inglenook and the colorful stories behind the names give this book a personal dimension. These strong-willed, competitive winemakers found ways to work cooperatively, both in sharing knowledge and technology and in promoting their region. The result was an unprecedented improvement in wine quality that brought with it a new reputation for the Napa Valley. In The Silverado Squatters, Robert Louis Stevenson refers to wine as "bottled poetry," and although Stevenson's reference was to the elite vineyards of France, his words are appropriate for Napa wines today. Their success, as Lapsley makes clear, is due to much more than the beneficence of sun and soil. Craft, vision, and determination have played a part too, and for that, wine drinkers the world over are grateful. Dreamers of the Valley of Plenty : A Portrait of the Napa Valley by Cheryll Aimee Barron Hardcover. 319 pages. 1995. This rich evocation of California's Napa Valley tells the story of a region mythologized but rarely understood, its cosmopolitian inhabitants, and the glories of its fabled vineyards and wines, now acknowledged as the finest in the world. 16-page photo insert Historical and Descriptive Sketchbook of Napa, Sonoma, Lake and Mendocino, 1873 |
