The Napa Valley
Now Has It’s Own Tell-It-All-Expose

Until recently most Tell-It-All books focussed on individuals like the Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra or Princess Di. Now however the recently released “ Dark Side of Eden” is an expose of a region, namely the Napa Valley.

It seems that the Napa Valley is no longer that bucolic strip of land on both sides of highway 129 that we remembered three decades ago. At that time limited debauchery was done by little old ladies from the Oakland Hills and San Francisco who tippled their way up and down the road at the free promotional wine tasting rooms that ran in the wineries from Napa City to Calistoga. After a day of tasting, those gigantic old Lincolns and Cadillacs often proved to be weapons of destruction equal to the hordes of SUVs that currently rumble bumper to bumper German Panzer style down the same roads.

James Conaway, author of nine books and a contributor to the Smithsonian updates his 10-year-old previous tome on Napa titled “Napa: The Story of an American Eden”. However this time the work comes across as a blend of a modern day soap opera and an historic range war story of the old West between the cattle ranchers and the interloper sheepherders. It is a battle between the old guard and the rich new interlopers who actually bring wine gunslingers with them to defile the land in attempts to produce “cult” wines more for ego than actual value.

Napa has been transformed from a verdant agricultural area developed by truck farmers that grew tomatoes, walnuts and plums to one of the most important wine producing areas in the world. However as Conaway’s story relates, a big price has been paid. The Silicon Valley. comers, investment bankers, lawyers, doctors and Hollywood types like Francis Ford Coppola bring in their architects, designers and marketing experts. They then dynamite the hillsides and put up ostentatious mansions with Feng Shui orientation to satisfy their ego needs and also plant some grapes. The grapes are planted and tended by consultants who instead of acting as hairdressers to the stars act as their paid mercenary vintners. Then the hype begins.  

In a semi fictional style, Conaway pulls no punches as he delves into the machinations of The Mondavi family and their next generation of “lucky spermers” along old families like the Cakebreads (all of whom have contributed to the hype). They are in the battle with “ the sheep herders” who they think are totally responsible for defiling the land  

The book will give an insight to any serious wine drinker or collector and enable him to understand why high wine prices and cult wines are being foisted upon the American wine consumer. The price of vineyard acreage has leaped from $40,000 per acre to $120,000  and more in the last few years due to ego demand and speculation. Whom do you think is expected to pay the price?

Fortunately, for you and me, it turns out that Napa is not the only place producing fine wine today  besides France. One can expect that the Napa wine bubble will soon burst like Nasdaq. Right now wine consumers  are…. as Walt Whitman so eloquently wrote “We are the masters of our fate, the captains of our soul.”