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What's special about Oakville

Robert Mondavi winery

One Napa Valley AVA is doing its best to stand out from the crowd. Pictured is the emblematic Robert Mondavi winery seen from the famous benchland.

Some of Napa Valley’s most prominent wine producers came to London en masse last month, a cohesive group based in the Oakville AVA, who organised several presentations of their wines and provided evidence that, unlike some Californian wine producers, they do care what people outside the US think of them.

What was interesting was how omnipresent Robert Mondavi, who died in 2008, was during the tasting and talk I attended. Suzanne Groth, president since...