Keeping Napa sacred

Richard reports on his first-ever visit to the Napa Valley – last week, the lucky so and so, while the rest of us froze in London.

In the Napa Valley, size matters. The appellation is a small one, responsible for only 4% of California’s total wine production, and with a vineyard acreage only an eighth that of Bordeaux, but the wines are big: big colour intensity, big fruit concentration and big alcohol. Producers are small, with around 75% making fewer than 10,000 cases a year, but revenue is big, generating an estimated 50 billion dollars for the US economy, I...