Napa at Last Light: America's Eden in an Age of Calamity, by James Conaway
James Conaway is a controversial figure in Napa. A journalist by trade, this is the last installment in a trilogy tracing Napa's growth from idyllic underdog backwater to a locus of wealth, culture, and a billion dollar industry. The first of this series was not shy about naming names; it aired several prominent families' dirty laundry, and earned Conaway a black mark in many circles. Napa at Last Light doesn't hesitate to call people out, either, but is focused more on another protagonist: Mother Nature.
Vineyards qualify as agriculture, and agriculture is farming, and thus has winemaking been imbued with a noble, back-to-the-land flavor, a rosy picture that many of Napa's wineries do not actually qualify for, though they strive constantly to claim it. No one decides to grow grapes and make wine to get rich, and most of the people who do so are already starting out with fortunes, either by inheritance or luck or good old fashioned "hard" work (read: finance and real estate). They come to Napa and see how beautiful it is and want to be a part of it, to make their name in the art of wine. But Napa is quite a small county, dwarfed by its neighbor Sonoma to the west. Land here is at a premium, most land selling for thousands of dollars an acre.
Okay, that's capitalism, supply and demand, all well and good. Two problems soon rear their heads: first, that there's very little land left in Napa that can actually sustain a healthy vineyard. It takes a lot of clear cutting and bulldozing and water to make a vineyard from scratch, and even more water to keep it going. Have you heard of this little drought we're having here in California? Then add to that erosion and vineyard runoff that makes its way into the water supply of Napa's residents. Trees hold the land together; without them, mud and dirt and silt slide downhill and into our streams. Not to mention the pesticides and other chemicals the vast majority of vineyards are sprayed with - all that gets into our water and air as well.
The second problem is development: now you've got yourself a lovely vineyard, having cut down several thousand beautiful old oaks to make way for your vines, and bulldozed several tons of dirt downstream to terrace them. Now you need people to come and taste it and buy it, and the best way to attract people is to build a beautiful new tasting room. Oh, and wouldn't it be lovely to offer food pairings with your wines you've worked so hard on, so we'll need to get a food permit, and if we're doing that we might as well make use of it and do dinners on occasion, oh but where will all those people park, better pave a 40 car parking lot and my, isn't that view lovely, we should really start having events here which means we'll need more bathrooms so we'll need a completely different event building and...you get the picture. Development snowballs into more development and suddenly your pristine wilderness is a 30 acre vineyard that drinks more water than entire towns, with 50 cars a day driving along newly paved roads through more previously untouched wilderness that lead to an event center with an even bigger footprint than your winemaking facility.
Conaway spares no one in this unflinching look at the despoliation of Napa Valley. Developers and winery owners, sure, but also city and county government agencies, even a few state ones, plus a bevy of environmental organizations who should be helping but really aren't. And he presents all this research and information in his trademark writing style, evocative, heady, and gently precise, just like the Napa wines he loves so dearly.
If you're in the Bay Area, James Conaway will be speaking at the Napa Main Library on Saturday, March 10th at 2:00!
Vineyards qualify as agriculture, and agriculture is farming, and thus has winemaking been imbued with a noble, back-to-the-land flavor, a rosy picture that many of Napa's wineries do not actually qualify for, though they strive constantly to claim it. No one decides to grow grapes and make wine to get rich, and most of the people who do so are already starting out with fortunes, either by inheritance or luck or good old fashioned "hard" work (read: finance and real estate). They come to Napa and see how beautiful it is and want to be a part of it, to make their name in the art of wine. But Napa is quite a small county, dwarfed by its neighbor Sonoma to the west. Land here is at a premium, most land selling for thousands of dollars an acre.
Okay, that's capitalism, supply and demand, all well and good. Two problems soon rear their heads: first, that there's very little land left in Napa that can actually sustain a healthy vineyard. It takes a lot of clear cutting and bulldozing and water to make a vineyard from scratch, and even more water to keep it going. Have you heard of this little drought we're having here in California? Then add to that erosion and vineyard runoff that makes its way into the water supply of Napa's residents. Trees hold the land together; without them, mud and dirt and silt slide downhill and into our streams. Not to mention the pesticides and other chemicals the vast majority of vineyards are sprayed with - all that gets into our water and air as well.
The second problem is development: now you've got yourself a lovely vineyard, having cut down several thousand beautiful old oaks to make way for your vines, and bulldozed several tons of dirt downstream to terrace them. Now you need people to come and taste it and buy it, and the best way to attract people is to build a beautiful new tasting room. Oh, and wouldn't it be lovely to offer food pairings with your wines you've worked so hard on, so we'll need to get a food permit, and if we're doing that we might as well make use of it and do dinners on occasion, oh but where will all those people park, better pave a 40 car parking lot and my, isn't that view lovely, we should really start having events here which means we'll need more bathrooms so we'll need a completely different event building and...you get the picture. Development snowballs into more development and suddenly your pristine wilderness is a 30 acre vineyard that drinks more water than entire towns, with 50 cars a day driving along newly paved roads through more previously untouched wilderness that lead to an event center with an even bigger footprint than your winemaking facility.
Conaway spares no one in this unflinching look at the despoliation of Napa Valley. Developers and winery owners, sure, but also city and county government agencies, even a few state ones, plus a bevy of environmental organizations who should be helping but really aren't. And he presents all this research and information in his trademark writing style, evocative, heady, and gently precise, just like the Napa wines he loves so dearly.
If you're in the Bay Area, James Conaway will be speaking at the Napa Main Library on Saturday, March 10th at 2:00!
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