Wine Trail

Napa County is situated in Northern California at the northeastern tip of San Francisco Bay. The county's primary industries are winegrape growing, wine production and tourism. There is little development in the county itself. The result is an attractive place for residents to live and tourists to visit.

The original inhabitants of the valley were the Wappo. The name Wappo was given by the Spanish and probably derived from the Spanish word "guapo", meaning "handsome." The natives were here at least 4,000 years before the Spaniards arrived. In 1831 there were an estimated 10,000 to 12,000 living in the valley. Most later lost their lives to cholera and smallpox, as well as to attacks by white men. There are still surviving Wappos in Napa, Sonoma and Lake counties.

The first American settler in the Napa Valley was George Yount. He arrived in 1831. He planted the first grapevines in the Napa Valley. The vines were from Mexico; but only in 1860’s the higher quality European winegrapes were introduced.

The wealth of post-Gold Rush San Francisco created a huge demand for wine, and by 1891 there were 619 vineyards throughout the valley. The wineries survived economic depression and the disease of phylloxera but were no match for Prohibition, the United States' "Great Experiment" of declaring alcoholic beverages not just immoral but illegal. Prohibition closed almost every Napa Valley winery. The few that survived provided medicinal wine or sacramental wine for churches. Vineyards were ripped out and replaced by prune and walnut orchards. Today there are more than 200 wineries throughout the county. The wine is always delicious.