While the Napa Valley was home to cultivated grapevines as early as 1653 with the planting of Mission grapes by Spanish missionaries, the Napa Valley wine industry as we know it today got its start in 1836.

In the early 1800s, much of the United States’ wine production came from New York, Virginia, Ohio and Missouri. After being awarded a Mexican Land Grant in what was at the time still northern Mexico, a young trapper by the name of George Calvert Yount first planted commercial grapevines in the Napa Valley. The city of Yountville would eventually be named in his honor.

Soon thereafter, a wide variety of immigrants, pioneers, visionaries and risk takers followed suit, each contributing to the colorful history of the Napa Valley in their own way. With a drive to make wine to rival their homelands, and an ingenuity unhindered by the Old World decrees of winemaking, they forged a path forward in this New World of wine.

As the booming industry of the California Gold Rush began to reveal itself as a bust, many settlers of San Francisco—including merchants, farmers, prospectors, and wealthy speculators—began to make their way out of the big city into the surrounding countryside.

Napa County was a popular destination for many farmers, and it was in the 1850s that Joseph Osborne planted vines on a parcel of land that he would come to call Oak Knoll. In 1859, Samuel Brannan planted vines on Agua Caliente Ranch, and named the surrounding region Calistoga.

Armed with a cider press and a visionary’s mindset, John Patchett is credited for opening the first commercial winery in the Napa Valley in 1859, hiring Charles Krug as his winemaker and earning the Napa Valley’s first wine review from California Farmer Magazine: “The white wine was light, clear and brilliant and very superior indeed; his red wine was excellent; we saw superior brandy, too.”

California Farmer Magazine would soon thereafter publish the first paper highlighting the potential profits of planting European grape varieties and making wine in the Napa Valley.

While the Napa Valley was quickly expanding its acres planted and total wineries, it was also establishing its winemaking process and garnering its reputation as a powerful winemaking force of the New World.

In 1875, winemaking pioneers Charles Krug, Henry Pellet and Seneca Ewer founded the St. Helena Viticultural Society, establishing a unity among vintners who were facing similar challenges. Their first focus was to improve the quality of the wines being made in the Napa Valley, and they aimed to popularize the planting of European grape varieties over Mission grapes. Soon the vineyards of the time were planted to a myriad of French, German and Italian varieties, the most popular being Zinfandel and Petite Sirah. During this same era, vintners began to recognize the particular potential of Bordeaux-style wines in the Napa Valley. In 1876, Morris Estee founded Hedgeside Vineyards, which would go on to become the very first to plant Cabernet Sauvignon in the Napa Valley. Inglenook was founded in 1879 by Gustave Niebaum, who made it his mission to improve the Napa Valley’s wine reputation. Inglenook would eventually be honored for producing the first truly Bordeaux-style wines in the Napa Valley.

In 1880, the first wine research center of the New World was founded at the University of California by Dr. Eugene Hilgard. A soil scientist, he began studying grapes that were best suited for the climate, soil and terroir of California. This program would eventually become the Agricultural Extension Program at the University of California, Davis.

Vintners were beginning to understand exactly how certain grapes grew in the varied soil of the Napa Valley, seeking out parcels of land specifically for its grape-growing qualities, and furthering the prestige of the land from the steep hillsides to the valley floor.

By the turn of the 20th century, the news had spread about the Napa Valley’s near-perfect combination of a warm climate, great soil and available land. And news was beginning to spread around the world about the quality of wine coming from this small valley in California.

With the total number of acres planted on the rise, so were the number of wineries popping up in the Napa Valley. By 1890, there were nearly 200 wineries in Napa and the surrounding valley, and 11 million cases of wine were produced in the state annually, most of it coming from the Napa Valley.

There were many wineries who were raising the quality bar even higher, and the world began to take notice. In 1889, both Inglenook and Migliavacca Wine Company won gold medals at the Paris World’s Fair (nearly a century prior to the famed Judgement of Paris of 1976).

There was a sea change occurring in the Napa Valley in the late 19th century that made the area an exciting place to be in the world of wine. In 1881, Josephine Tychon became the first female vintner of the Napa Valley. The Napa Valley wine industry was a rising star, but their star would soon fall in the face of multiple hardships, from which Napa took decades to recover.

As the wine industry boom was reaching its peak, a very small insect was also settling in the Napa Valley, feeding off the copious grapevines it needed to flourish. And the United States was about to hit its own dry spell.

This insect, Phylloxera, is a root louse that feeds off the roots and leaves of a vine, and was so prolific in the Napa Valley that it quickly decimated over 80% of the total vines planted. The Phylloxera outbreak was so hard-hitting that many of the Napa Valley’s vintners turned to ripping out their vines and planting other crops, such as walnuts and prunes.

The solution was eventually found in using Phylloxera-resistant rootstock of a native Northern Californian vine, but the few wineries who were able to withstand the outbreak were soon hit with another hardship. In 1918, the Volstead Act was passed and Prohibition went into effect in the United States in 1920. This decimated the wine industry even further. A very select few were able to remain open by producing sacramental wine or selling barrels of grape juice (perhaps along with instructions on exactly how not to ferment it at home). But most were forced to let their vines die off or abandon their land altogether.

The Great Depression would soon hit the entire country, causing most industries to struggle, and the Napa wine industry was certainly no exception. Only a very few wineries are open today who managed to weather the storms of the early 20th century.

The next generation of pioneers reinvented the wine business of the Napa Valley: Georges de Latour, André Tchelistcheff, John Daniels, Martin Stelling and Robert Mondavi began to rebuild the Napa Valley.

Georges de Latour is credited with ridding the Napa Valley of the Phylloxera outbreak by introducing rootstock resistant to the bug, which paved the way for new winemakers to come to the region and rebuild the wine industry after Prohibition and the Great Depression. He also hired André Tchelistcheff as his winemaker at Beaulieu Vineyards in 1938. Tchelistcheff, who emigrated from France for the job, is responsible for introducing many modern winemaking techniques to the Napa Valley, including: the replanting of French varieties; frost protection, using small, French oak barrels for aging; malolactic fermentation; eliminating pasteurization; and using cold fermentation to maintain flavor and color.

Along with Tchelistcheff, Martin Sterling and Caesar Mondavi were among the first to identify Bordeaux varieties, particularly Cabernet Sauvignon, as ideally suited for the Napa Valley. Louis M. Martini and Inglenook wineries were some of the first to bottle the single variety Cabernet Sauvignon for which the Napa Valley would become world-renowned.

The Napa Valley Vintners was founded by seven vintners with the vision to work together to make the industry stronger, a thread that unites the Napa Valley across centuries.

In the early 1940s, the quickly expanding Napa Valley wine industry faced a number of problems, including price controls and a daunting shortage of labor, bottles and rail cars in order to ship wine across the country.

In 1943, Louis M. Martini, John Daniel Jr., Charles Forni and Louis Stralla discussed forming an association, a vintners’ forum, that would allow a regular opportunity to exchange ideas. Their vision was to work as a group to overcome some of these obstacles and elevate the status of Napa Valley wines. This team of vintners believed they could solve industry-related problems better collectively than as individuals.

By 1944, an agreement was drafted and signed by seven vintners: Fernande de Latour of Beaulieu Vineyard, Felix Salmina of Larkmead, Charles Forni of the Napa Valley Co-op, Robert Mondavi of CK Mondavi and Sons, John Daniel Jr. of Inglenook, Louis M. Martini and Louis Stralla.

Although the original members of the Napa Valley Vintners often referred to themselves as “an eating and drinking society,” they set in motion the hospitality, industry advocacy and marketing activities that have focused worldwide attention on the uniqueness of this small valley as one of the premier winegrowing regions in the world.

In the first of its kind in the US, the Napa Valley becomes a protected Agricultural Preserve, identifying agricultural and open space as the highest and best use of the land.

In April 1968, after hearing the outcry of the vintners and residents of the Napa Valley, the US government enacted the country’s first Agricultural Preserve, with a goal to preserve open space and prevent future over-development.

This visionary land-zoning ordinance established agriculture and open space as the best use for the land in the fertile valley and foothill areas of Napa County. Initially, the ordinance protected 23,000 acres of agricultural land stretching from Napa to Calistoga. Today, more than 32,000 acres are contained within the Preserve, and no land has ever been removed.

Vintners have played a pivotal role in the history of Napa Valley’s preservation and will continue to play a vital role in ensuring that the pastoral beauty and intact natural environment that we all enjoy today still exists for future generations.

“We either fight really hard to keep what we have in terms of agriculture, or we’re absorbed into the Bay Area metropolitan region.” – David Morrison, County Planning, Building and Environmental Services Director

Today, the Ag Preserve enjoys widespread local support and continues to be the cornerstone of preserving and elevating Napa County’s agricultural heritage.

Six Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons and six Chardonnays were blind tasted against four French Bordeaux and four Burgundies in a pivotal moment for Napa Valley wine.

The brainchild of a British wine merchant who exclusively imported French wines over California wines, the Judgement of Paris was universally expected to prove the superiority of French wines. This was the generally accepted idea of the time, after all. Eleven judges, nine of them French, gathered to blind taste all 20 wines on May 24, 1976. The results surprised the world—with perhaps the exception of anyone living in the Napa Valley.

The 1973 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay and the 1973 Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon took the top honors, both from the Napa Valley. The event was notoriously unattended by the press, with the exception of a single reporter from TIME Magazine, who reported the story and immediately provided the credibility and recognition that Napa had so long been earning. This definitively launched the modern era for the Napa Valley wine industry, and secured its position as the epicenter of New World wine.

With international acclaim for the region, Napa vintners and residents pushed to establish the state’s first American Viticultural Area (AVA).

In the 1970’s, the concept of single-vineyard wines was popularized in the Napa Valley by pioneers such as Joseph Heitz, Diamond Creek and Milton Eisele. These winemakers and growers believed that making vineyard-designate wines was the only way to show the distinct properties of the land. In 1971, Eisele began to insist that any winery purchasing fruit from his Eisele Vineyard should include his vineyard’s name on the label.

This newfound focus on the unique terroir of the Napa Valley led to a proposal to establish the Napa Valley as a defined American Viticultural Area. Once the proposal was posted, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) received over 100 written comments from residents and vintners alike pushing for the creation of this new Napa Valley AVA.

Thus, the AVA was quickly defined and passed on January 28, 1981. In the subsequent years, the Napa Valley AVA became home to 16 individual sub- or “nested” AVAs, further proving the unique characteristics of the varied terroir in this small valley.

A drive to continuously improve the quality of both the vines and the wine of the Napa Valley led to the “Golden Decade” of the 1990s.

Not only did the number of high-end producers increase exponentially, but the vintages themselves were some of the best on record. The years from 1990 leading up to 1997 were phenomenal, with the 1997 vintage still considered one of the best on record with nearly perfect weather.

This combination of driven winemakers, high-scoring wines and idyllic climates firmly placed the Napa Valley among the elite wine regions of the world.

Napa Green’s focus is on protecting and restoring the Napa Valley watershed, conserving water and energy, and reducing waste and our carbon footprint, while also being conscientious employers and good neighbors.

For vineyards, Napa Green works to conserve precious water resources, prevent erosion and sediment runoff, identify and reduce harmful inputs, protect and restore riparian habitats, and ensure healthy employees and happy neighbors.

For wineries, Napa Green’s standards save energy and water, both by reducing usage as well as increasing efficiencies, reducing waste through recycling and composting, favoring environmental purchasing practices, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and carbon footprints. As well, wineries care for employees, focus on being good neighbors, and take part in building excitement and engagement around sustainability.

Independent, third-party certification of vineyards and wineries ensures that Napa Green is one of the most rigorous sustainability accreditations available in today’s wine industry.

Today, we are nothing but enriched by our valley’s history of both triumph and adversity, pioneers and industry experts, busts and booms.

It’s been a long time in the making, but reflecting back on the story of how today’s Napa Valley came to be, we are inspired by an amazing spirit of cooperation, camaraderie and unity of purpose. It’s this very spirit that ensures our continued improvement in the vineyard, the cellar and of course, the bottle.