California's Napa Valley: One Hundred Sixty Years of Wine Making

This is the first comprehensive history of the wine industry in Napa Valley the worlds 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.