50 Fun Facts About Napa Valley

Which soft, luxurious material takes its name from the California city of Napa?

Leather called nappa takes its name from Napa, where German tanner Emanuel Manasse developed the tanning process at the Sawyer Tanning Company; today it trims car seats and handbags.

Napa cabbage has no link to Napa Valley: its name comes from a word for vegetable leaves in which language?

Japanese speakers use nappa for the leaves of any vegetable, so the name has nothing to do with wine country; in Japan the cabbage itself is called hakusai.

Francis Ford Coppola bought much of Napa Valley's historic Inglenook estate in 1975 with his profits from which film?

The Godfather paid for the vineyards, but the Inglenook name stayed with drinks companies until 2011, when Coppola bought the trademark for more, he said, than the whole estate had cost.

Silverado Vineyards in Napa Valley was developed by the daughter and son-in-law of which American entertainment pioneer?

Walt Disney's eldest daughter Diane first toured Napa wineries with her mother Lillian; she and husband Ron Miller bought vineyard land there in the 1970s and began building their own winery in 1981.

Which singer caused a two-month sensation in Napa Valley while filming the 1961 drama Wild in the Country there?

Elvis Presley was so mobbed at his Napa motel that he was moved into a house used in the film, which is set a continent away in the Shenandoah Valley.

Which Indianapolis 500 and Formula One champion opened a Tuscan-themed Napa winery under his own surname in 1996?

Mario Andretti got the idea from a commemorative wine sold to mark his 1994 retirement, then bought the vineyard with a former Kmart chief whose company had sponsored his racing team.

Which 1998 family comedy filmed the vineyard home of Dennis Quaid's winegrower character at a real Napa Valley estate?

The Parent Trap used Staglin Family Vineyard as Parker Knoll, where one separated twin grows up in Napa while her sister is raised in London.

Which Napa Valley restaurant, run by chef Thomas Keller since 1994, occupies a building first put up as a saloon?

The French Laundry takes its name from the 1920s, when the old saloon became a French steam laundry; locals still called the building that when it reopened as a restaurant in 1978.

Which audio device did Peter Jensen and Edwin Pridham invent in a Napa lab before renaming their company Magnavox?

The loudspeaker had its first big public test on Christmas Eve 1915, when the pair's system carried speeches across a vast crowd outside San Francisco's City Hall.

Which 2008 film stars Alan Rickman as the British wine merchant whose 1976 Paris tasting made Napa Valley famous?

Bottle Shock premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and the real merchant, Steven Spurrier, complained that hardly a word of its script was true.

Which white grape made the 1973 Napa wine ranked above four French Burgundies at the 1976 Judgment of Paris?

Chardonnay is also the grape of white Burgundy, which made the upset sting; organizer Steven Spurrier sold mostly French wines and expected them to win.

Which vintner quit his family's winery after a feud with his brother Peter and opened his own in Oakville in 1966?

Robert Mondavi built the valley's first large new winery since Prohibition, and the brothers only made wine together again in 2005: one barrel that sold for $400,000 at auction.

Which Napa winery, revived in 1972 after decades of making no wine, produced the top white at the Judgment of Paris?

Chateau Montelena had stopped making wine at Prohibition, and its winning 1973 vintage came just a year after production resumed under winemaker Mike Grgich.

Which Napa winery, founded by Warren Winiarski in 1970, made the top-ranked red at the 1976 Judgment of Paris?

Stag's Leap Wine Cellars later fought neighbor Stags' Leap Winery over the name; California's Supreme Court let both keep it, one with the apostrophe before the s and one after.

Which American magazine employed George Taber, the only reporter to attend the 1976 Judgment of Paris wine tasting?

Time broke the result to the world through Taber, and France's wine establishment retaliated by banning organizer Steven Spurrier from its prestigious tasting tour for a year.

Which town at Napa Valley's northern end is famed for hot springs and for mud baths made with volcanic ash?

Calistoga got its name, founder Samuel Brannan reportedly said, from a slip of the tongue when he meant to call his resort the Saratoga of California.

The Scottish author who honeymooned in 1880 at an abandoned mine above Napa Valley later wrote which adventure novel?

Treasure Island author Robert Louis Stevenson and his bride squatted in a bunkhouse at the derelict Silverado mine because they could not afford a hotel at ten dollars a week.

Which Yellowstone landmark shares its name with a geyser visitors can watch erupt near Napa Valley's northern end?

Old Faithful of California is no natural wonder: it erupts from the casing of a well drilled in the late 19th century.

The 2014 South Napa earthquake was the Bay Area's largest since which 1989 quake struck during the World Series?

Loma Prieta struck just before game three between the Giants and the Athletics, two Bay Area teams; the smaller Napa quake damaged wineries and wine storage across the county.

Which pioneer founded the 1861 winery commonly cited as Napa Valley's first, on land from his wife's dowry?

Charles Krug, an immigrant from Prussia, pressed his grapes with a cider press, one of several new ideas he brought to California's young wine industry.

Which Napa winery was founded as a joint venture with Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Château Mouton Rothschild?

Opus One was called Napamedoc until 1982, and its two founders first met in 1970 at a beach hotel in Hawaii.

Which Oakville cult winery made the 1992 Cabernet that fetched $500,000 for one bottle at a 2000 Napa charity auction?

Screaming Eagle began with a single acre, about 80 vines, that former real estate agent Jean Phillips kept for herself while selling the rest of her grapes to other wineries.

Which winery, founded in 1876 and home to the ornate Rhine House, is the oldest continuously operating in Napa Valley?

Beringer became the first California winery to offer public tours and tastings after Prohibition ended, and later lured Hollywood stars such as Clark Gable to visit.

The Napa Valley Wine Train was founded in 1987 by Vincent DeDomenico, a co-inventor of which boxed side dish?

Rice-A-Roni's co-inventor was 72 when he joined the rail venture, inspired by a trip on the Orient Express to offer the same luxury dining in wine country.

Which Napa Valley winery, opened in 2007, has 107 rooms, a moat, a drawbridge and a torture chamber?

Castello di Amorosa cost owner Dario Sattui some $40 million to build, using 8,000 tons of local stone and 850,000 bricks imported from Europe.

Visitors reach Sterling Vineyards' hilltop winery, built to resemble a Mykonos village, by which means of transport?

A gondola lift carries guests up a volcanic hill to a winery whose bells came from a London church destroyed in the Second World War.

Which Napa Valley sparkling wine house supplied the 1972 Toast to Peace between Richard Nixon and Zhou Enlai in Beijing?

Schramsberg had been revived only seven years earlier by Jack and Jamie Davies, and its sparkling wines have been served by every presidential administration since.

Which pink wine did Napa's Sutter Home create by accident in 1975 when a batch of fermenting juice got stuck?

White Zinfandel was a by-product: winemaker Bob Trinchero had drained off some juice to make his red Zinfandel more concentrated, and the leftover proved saleable.

Which 1980s CBS soap starring Jane Wyman as a ruthless wine matriarch filmed its exteriors at a Napa Valley vineyard?

Falcon Crest shot at Spring Mountain Vineyard for six weeks each summer, then moved to Los Angeles for its interior scenes.

Which mountain range walls in Napa Valley on its western and northern sides, opposite the Vaca range?

The Mayacamas Mountains cast a rain shadow that leaves the eastern side of the valley noticeably drier, and they include Mount Saint Helena at the county's northern end.

Which bay at Napa Valley's open southern end keeps the nearest vineyards cooler than those farther north?

San Pablo Bay also shaped the ground itself: soils at the southern end of the valley are sediments left by the bay's earlier advances and retreats.

Carneros, the cool wine district at Napa Valley's southern end, takes its name from the Spanish for which animals?

Rams and their flocks once dotted these hillsides; today the cool district is known for Pinot Noir and for sparkling wines that drew Champagne producers to plant there.

Which Indigenous people, distantly related to the Yuki, had traditional homelands in Napa Valley and Alexander Valley?

The Wappo resisted every military campaign sent against them by General Vallejo until the two sides signed a peace treaty in 1836.

Rancho Caymus, the 1836 land grant covering the heart of Napa Valley, was issued under the rule of which country?

Mexico made its grantee the valley's first permanent Euro-American settler, and the United States promised to honor such titles in the treaty that ended the Mexican-American War.

Which root-feeding louse devastated Napa Valley's vineyards in the late 1800s and struck again in the 1980s?

Phylloxera returned in 1983 in a vineyard planted on AxR1 rootstock, and many growers used the forced replanting to switch to grape varieties better suited to their land.

Which legal product let a few Napa Valley wineries stay open while Prohibition shut down most of their neighbors?

Sacramental wine for churches was still permitted, and growers without such agreements kept their vines by selling the grapes to people making wine at home.

André Tchelistcheff, the Russian-born dean of American winemakers, was hired in 1938 by which Napa Valley winery?

Beaulieu Vineyard founder Georges de Latour found him in France, and he brought Napa small French oak barrels, cold fermentation and frost protection for its vines.

Which name, picked from over 6,000 contest entries in 1988, do American wineries use for Bordeaux-style blends?

Meritage joins merit and heritage, and the contest winner was paid in wine: two bottles from the first ten vintages of every wine licensed to use the name.

Napa Valley became America's second official wine appellation in 1981; which state's Augusta region was the first?

Missouri's Augusta, a river town in the area known as the Missouri Rhineland, won its designation in June 1980, seven months ahead of Napa.

On wine labels such as those from Napa Valley, what do the three letters AVA stand for?

American Viticultural Area status came to Napa Valley in 1981, after a petition from its vintners and grape growers, making it the first such appellation in California.

Which climate type, with warm dry summers and mild wet winters, makes Napa Valley so well suited to wine grapes?

Mediterranean warmth in Napa is tempered by fog: cool Pacific air is drawn inland as hot air rises over California's Central Valley.

Which reservoir, Napa County's largest body of water, drains through a funnel-shaped spillway nicknamed the Glory Hole?

Lake Berryessa drowned the town of Monticello when the reservoir filled in the early 1960s, and the ruins still show when the water is low.

Which cooking school turned Greystone Cellars, a vast 1889 stone winery in Napa Valley, into a campus in 1995?

The Culinary Institute of America paid about a tenth of the building's $14 million valuation, then spent $15 million on renovation and earthquake strengthening.

Which music festival fills the Napa Valley Expo fairgrounds each year, usually over Memorial Day weekend?

BottleRock drew over 120,000 people to its 2013 debut, yet vendors and workers said the first organizers left more than $2.5 million in bills unpaid.

Mike Grgich, who made the white that won the 1976 Judgment of Paris, was born in which present-day country?

Croatia was his home until 1954, when he left communist Yugoslavia for West Germany, then Canada, and finally a winemaking career in California.

Which bargain wine brand sold at Trader Joe's began as a Napa Valley winery that went bankrupt in the 1990s?

Charles Shaw, later nicknamed Two Buck Chuck, had its name bought out of bankruptcy for just $27,000 by a company co-owned by Fred Franzia, which sold 800 million bottles in about a decade.

Which fur trapper, generally credited with planting Napa Valley's first grapevines, has a town there named after him?

George Yount's town was first laid out as Sebastopol, but a place in the next county had already claimed that name, so it was renamed after his death.

Which Napa Valley wine village is named for the man whose 1864 wedding present was 1,040 acres of a pioneer's ranch?

Rutherford honors Thomas Rutherford, who married Elizabeth of the pioneer's family; the settlement that grew up around the couple's ranch took his name.

Gustave Niebaum, the sea captain and Alaska fur trader who founded Inglenook in 1879, was born in which country?

Finland's capital Helsinki was his birthplace, under the name Gustaf Nybom, and he first reached Alaska at 16 aboard a ship of the Russian-American Company.

Dominus Estate in Napa Valley is owned by Christian Moueix, who long ran production at which famous Bordeaux château?

Pétrus was his day job in 1982 when the daughters of a Napa vintner invited him into a partnership at their family's Napanook vineyard, which he later owned outright.