Napa Valley

Prohibition did not merely close Napa's wineries; it rewrote what the valley's grapes were for. The Napa Valley Vintners records that vineyards and wineries were abandoned over the fourteen years after 1920, with only a handful continuing by producing sacramental wine. The loophole that kept vines in the ground was domestic: Section 29 of the Volstead Act allowed 200 gallons of "non-intoxicating cider and fruit juice" to be made each year at home, roughly a thousand bottles per household.

Growers who kept their vines planted sold their crops to home winemakers, shipping fruit east by rail to households making their legal 200 gallons. The wineries that stayed open did so on church contracts: Beaulieu Vineyard obtained a contract to supply sacramental wine to churches nationwide, and demand rose so steadily that the winery repeatedly expanded, reaching over a million gallons of production by repeal in 1933. Recovery afterwards was slow, and the Great Depression slowed it further.

On 24 May 1976 nine French judges blind-tasted California against France and ranked California first in both flights. The margins were narrow. Stag's Leap Wine Cellars 1973 scored 127.5, against 126 for Château Mouton-Rothschild 1970 and 125.5 for Château Haut-Brion 1970. In the white flight the 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay, made by Miljenko Grgich, took 132 points — the highest total scored by any wine, red or white, in the tasting.

Fifty years later the wines were poured again. A private re-creation was held in San Francisco on 24 May 2026 with a panel of ten wine professionals, using the same vintages. California again took four of the top five places, led by the 1970 Heitz Wine Cellars Martha's Vineyard — but the 1973 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars that won in 1976 placed seventh of ten. In the parallel contemporary flight, the 2016 Château Haut-Brion finished first.

Napa's defining decision was about land, not wine. The Napa Valley Vintners records that America's first agricultural preserve was created here in 1968, declaring agriculture the highest and best use of the land. The county built it on California's Williamson Act, which gave landowners property-tax relief for committing land to agriculture. The preserve initially covered 23,000 acres of valley floor in unincorporated land between Napa and Calistoga, and has grown since.

The appellation came thirteen years after the preserve. Napa Valley received its AVA designation in 1981, and the Napa Valley Vintners states it was California's first recognised AVA and the second in the United States. Seventeen nested AVAs now sit inside the boundary, from Los Carneros at the bay to Calistoga at the northern tip. The boundary itself is federal law, set out at 27 CFR 9.23 and defined by named USGS quadrangle maps.

Regulation here reaches the visitor directly. Napa County's Winery Definition Ordinance precludes wineries from hosting social events, which is why Stag's Leap Wine Cellars tells guests it cannot host weddings. The rules remain contested rather than settled: on 14 April 2026 the Napa County Farm Bureau, Napa Valley Vintners, Napa Valley Grapegrowers and Winegrowers of Napa County appeared jointly before the county Board of Supervisors calling for permitting reform and long-term land-use protections.

Napa's most quoted vineyard name predates the AVA by more than a century. H. W. Crabb bought land near Oakville by the Napa River in 1868 and planted a vineyard he named To Kalon — Greek for the highest beauty. By 1877 he had 130 acres in the ground and was producing 50,000 US gallons a year, and he trialled over 400 grape varieties to find which suited the site. The name is still fought over in court today.