Lorna’s Reviews > Dreamers of the Valley of Plenty: A Portrait of the Napa Valley > Status Update

“The Napa Valley tends to cut people down to size more than most places, and I think that’s because it’s farm country. It’s fine if you have a fancy house or a fancy garden, but what most people want to talk about is food and wine and the grapes.”

“Still, in the privacy of their homes, Napa’s Italian immigrants kept their culinary skills honed and sipped wine with their meals. The upholding of these traditions helped preserve the one human institution Italians value above all others: the family.”

“Wine’s mythical resonances make it almost a foregone conclusion that the life of the man that led Napa into the modern era of winemaking should contain strange lands and separations, princes and princesses, disastrous acts of nature and a political revolution. The idea of a life making wine was far removed from the ambitions of his childhood; the road that led him to it was tortuous.”