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A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma
It’s Napa versus Sonoma, and the antics are rampant!
When acclaimed Vanity Fair journalist Alan Deutschman came to the California wine country as the lucky house guest of very rich friends, he was surprised to find a civil war being fought between Napa Valley, which epitomized prestige and wealthy excess, and neighboring Sonoma Valley, a ragtag bohemian enclave so stubbornly backward that rambunctious chickens wandered freely through town. In A Tale of Two Valleys , Deutschman wittily captures these stranger-than-fiction locales and uncorks the hilarious absurdities of life among the wine world’s glitterati. The cast of characters brims with eccentrics, egomaniacs, and a mysterious man in black who crashed the elegant Napa Valley Wine Auction before proceeding to pay a half-million dollars for a single bottle. What develops is nothing less than the struggle for the soul of one of America’s last bits of paradise.
A San Francisco Chronicle bestseller
When acclaimed Vanity Fair journalist Alan Deutschman came to the California wine country as the lucky house guest of very rich friends, he was surprised to find a civil war being fought between Napa Valley, which epitomized prestige and wealthy excess, and neighboring Sonoma Valley, a ragtag bohemian enclave so stubbornly backward that rambunctious chickens wandered freely through town. In A Tale of Two Valleys , Deutschman wittily captures these stranger-than-fiction locales and uncorks the hilarious absurdities of life among the wine world’s glitterati. The cast of characters brims with eccentrics, egomaniacs, and a mysterious man in black who crashed the elegant Napa Valley Wine Auction before proceeding to pay a half-million dollars for a single bottle. What develops is nothing less than the struggle for the soul of one of America’s last bits of paradise.
A San Francisco Chronicle bestseller
240 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
9 people are currently reading
142 people want to read
About the author
Alan Deutschman
15 books34 followersAlan Deutschman is currently writing "Walk the Walk," a book about leadership, which will be published in September 2009 by the Portfolio imprint at Penguin.
His blog about leadership is at:
http://www.leaderswalkthewalk.blogspo...
His blog about leadership is at:
http://www.leaderswalkthewalk.blogspo...
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
May 10, 2016
This was the non-fiction selection for my in person book club. It's about the Napa/Sonoma Valleys in N. Calif., our backyard. All of us have spent a lot of time there so we thought it would be interesting. It's not and all because of the conceited, egotistical writer who was way too excited about being around rich people.
The Silicon Valley has produced many things including too many rich people with money on their hands and a desire to spend it ridiculously. As they expand into other areas like San Francisco and Napa, there are no places for regular people like teachers, firemen, and nurses to live. They drive the prices up and no one else can afford them. Sigh.
These two valleys have handled them differently. Napa has embraced the newly rich and become one big resort for rich people like George Lukas. Sonoma has resisted the influx. This author has really mocked the natives in this book. First of all, he calls them "shit kickers" and bohemians. Who says bohemians? Nobody I know. Shit kickers is very derogatory term and so untrue. He also talks about how uncultured and unsophisticated the people in the Sonoma Valley are.
I live in a small town and I am so tired of those myths. In my town of 5,000 we have an Arts Center, a museum, and a live theater. I could go on and on but I won't bore you. This author went around living at his rich friends houses and then trying to be one of the natives. It didn't work. The locals were suspicious. Imagine that.
A waste of my time.
The Silicon Valley has produced many things including too many rich people with money on their hands and a desire to spend it ridiculously. As they expand into other areas like San Francisco and Napa, there are no places for regular people like teachers, firemen, and nurses to live. They drive the prices up and no one else can afford them. Sigh.
These two valleys have handled them differently. Napa has embraced the newly rich and become one big resort for rich people like George Lukas. Sonoma has resisted the influx. This author has really mocked the natives in this book. First of all, he calls them "shit kickers" and bohemians. Who says bohemians? Nobody I know. Shit kickers is very derogatory term and so untrue. He also talks about how uncultured and unsophisticated the people in the Sonoma Valley are.
I live in a small town and I am so tired of those myths. In my town of 5,000 we have an Arts Center, a museum, and a live theater. I could go on and on but I won't bore you. This author went around living at his rich friends houses and then trying to be one of the natives. It didn't work. The locals were suspicious. Imagine that.
A waste of my time.
November 30, 2009
The flowery "I'm a clever writer guy" language kind of made me crazy.
Guy from big city goes to Sonoma and Napa, learns that Sonoma is full of hippies and Napa is full of rich snobs, and glassy-winged sharpshooters will destroy all the wine - like hubris destroys all heroes.
There wasn't really any revelation or introspection about how or why Sonoma and Napa are so different, and it was mostly self-indulgent, look how rich my friends are.
Guy from big city goes to Sonoma and Napa, learns that Sonoma is full of hippies and Napa is full of rich snobs, and glassy-winged sharpshooters will destroy all the wine - like hubris destroys all heroes.
There wasn't really any revelation or introspection about how or why Sonoma and Napa are so different, and it was mostly self-indulgent, look how rich my friends are.
October 18, 2007
I've learned that Sonoma is overrun with chickens.
Further in, another interesting story:
At a late-90s wine auction in Napa, the stage was a set for an evening of elaborate purchases of old wine. The paddles were handed out in the order of most $ spent the previous year. So, the woman with paddle 1 had spent the most(just over 1.2 million the year before.)
A man dressed entirely in black saunters in a bit under the wire. He has no reservation, and no one knows who he is. After much bristling, the auction people allow him to sit in after agreeing to spend no less than $10,000 at auction. He has paddle 318.
As the day wears on, bottles upon bottles are snatched up by paddles 1-20, until the long-awaited lot comes to the table. It is a cult-wine, the name of which I cannot remember. The bottle is larger than normal, this one holds approx. 8 normal bottles of wine.
The woman with paddle 1 stirs in her seat, anxious to finally be at the lot she has come to purchase. She owns many high-class steakhouses around the country, and comes to auction to purchase high-price wines to offer to her rich diners.
The bidding, however, does not go her way.
Paddle 318, the un-assuming man dressed all in black, a complete nobody, purchased the bottle for...........$500,000. (Approximately $16,000 a glass)
And by day's end, he has purchased well over $2 million in wine--thus dropping the jaws of an entire room of wine snobs.
I freakin love this book.
And Finally:
The book stayed consistently good for me. There was a dry patch at the end concerning some sort of winged insect that may or may not ever come to California and may or may not kill the vines. Other than that--absolutely enlightening and interesting. I cannot wait to visit Cali wine country--and it sounds like I'm more of a Sonoma girl than a Napa one.
Further in, another interesting story:
At a late-90s wine auction in Napa, the stage was a set for an evening of elaborate purchases of old wine. The paddles were handed out in the order of most $ spent the previous year. So, the woman with paddle 1 had spent the most(just over 1.2 million the year before.)
A man dressed entirely in black saunters in a bit under the wire. He has no reservation, and no one knows who he is. After much bristling, the auction people allow him to sit in after agreeing to spend no less than $10,000 at auction. He has paddle 318.
As the day wears on, bottles upon bottles are snatched up by paddles 1-20, until the long-awaited lot comes to the table. It is a cult-wine, the name of which I cannot remember. The bottle is larger than normal, this one holds approx. 8 normal bottles of wine.
The woman with paddle 1 stirs in her seat, anxious to finally be at the lot she has come to purchase. She owns many high-class steakhouses around the country, and comes to auction to purchase high-price wines to offer to her rich diners.
The bidding, however, does not go her way.
Paddle 318, the un-assuming man dressed all in black, a complete nobody, purchased the bottle for...........$500,000. (Approximately $16,000 a glass)
And by day's end, he has purchased well over $2 million in wine--thus dropping the jaws of an entire room of wine snobs.
I freakin love this book.
And Finally:
The book stayed consistently good for me. There was a dry patch at the end concerning some sort of winged insect that may or may not ever come to California and may or may not kill the vines. Other than that--absolutely enlightening and interesting. I cannot wait to visit Cali wine country--and it sounds like I'm more of a Sonoma girl than a Napa one.
May 11, 2007
I finished reading A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma. I found myself laughing out loud at Deutschman's descriptions of the quirky locals he meets in Sonoma (including roosters and their advocates) and the book is tempting me to infiltrate the Tuesday Farmer's Market over summer vacation!
A paragraph I recently enjoyed from this book:
"If you saw an overweight thirty-five-year-old man steer his car into the empty parking lot of a neighborhood bar before ten in the morning and sit there alone, waiting impatiently for the doors to open so he could be the first customer and quickly finish a couple of drinks and then spend the rest of the late spring day [...] slogging off to a series of other nearby bars, you might think that the solitary man was a potential alcoholic and view him with a mixture of sympathy and scorn. But if you didn't call the places "bar" and instead referred to them as the "tasting rooms" or "visitor centers" of well-reputed wineries[...] you would probably view the drinker with admiration and envy as an enthusiast, a connoisseur..."
This book goes into the politics of Sonoma Valley and how it may or may not survive in the future...
A paragraph I recently enjoyed from this book:
"If you saw an overweight thirty-five-year-old man steer his car into the empty parking lot of a neighborhood bar before ten in the morning and sit there alone, waiting impatiently for the doors to open so he could be the first customer and quickly finish a couple of drinks and then spend the rest of the late spring day [...] slogging off to a series of other nearby bars, you might think that the solitary man was a potential alcoholic and view him with a mixture of sympathy and scorn. But if you didn't call the places "bar" and instead referred to them as the "tasting rooms" or "visitor centers" of well-reputed wineries[...] you would probably view the drinker with admiration and envy as an enthusiast, a connoisseur..."
This book goes into the politics of Sonoma Valley and how it may or may not survive in the future...
November 25, 2007
The only non-fiction I really like is travel writing, which is essentially what this is. It was a nice portrait of Sonoma, less so of Napa and totally made me want to live there. However there were some things that I objected to in his writing. Fistly calling farmers "shitkickers." I find that totally offensive. Also, don't call anyone white trash, while I'm not offended by that phrase myself I feel that it's just poor taste. You don't see the word ass in the new york times crossword puzzle and you don't call people white trash. Thirdly, I think the word octogenarian and all of its numerical counterparts should be stricken from the english language . . . it's annoying.
April 17, 2020
Really interesting book. The author has a great writing style, and he really transports the reader to a city council meeting in Sonoma, or to Marc Benioff's Napa mansion. I felt like I was hanging out with the characters in the book. Plus, while I have heard of Napa, I wasn't quite familiar with Sonoma. While I live far away from wine country, The squabbles between pro development and anti development activists are still familiar.
The only criticism is the book isn't new. The author spent time in Sonoma and Napa in 2000 (and the book was published in 2oo3), and some of the info is clearly outdated (Salesforce.com was still a "startup" in the book.
The only criticism is the book isn't new. The author spent time in Sonoma and Napa in 2000 (and the book was published in 2oo3), and some of the info is clearly outdated (Salesforce.com was still a "startup" in the book.
September 19, 2017
I enjoyed this book. I grew up in the town of Sonoma, and it took place in the early 2000s, which is when I graduated high school. It felt familiar and brought back lots of memories. The only thing I didn't like was how political the book was. I think I might have enjoyed more of the local/average citizen's perspective. Nevertheless, if you are familiar with Sonoma, or are curious about this wonderful place, it's worth the read!
May 6, 2021
I lived in Napa for many years and worked for a nonprofit that serviced both areas and benefitted from the yearly wine auctions I enjoyed reliving the surroundings. My favorite quote related to the glassy-winged sharpshooter:
“Humans had thought that they could impose their will on the environment, but now they would be humbled and humiliated by forces far more powerful than themselves.”
“Humans had thought that they could impose their will on the environment, but now they would be humbled and humiliated by forces far more powerful than themselves.”
October 20, 2022
A great comparison of Napa and Sonoma, with a bit of California history mixed in. Pretty striking how, even 20 years ago, topics of inequity, newcomers, and development were causing rifts only larger now. While the author loses focus a bit in the second half on local politics, he raises some really important issues about sustainable development and who should have access to what.
January 24, 2010
This book presents a short history of Napa and Sonoma, the famous wine making regions, with a look at the divisions that have arisen between various factions in the area. The author, a financial journalist, spends time crashing at the weekend homes of his wealthy friends so that he can really get to know wine country. What he finds is a community that comes to life when the rich weekend visitors depart, and a hostile political climate pitting the longtime residents and hippie contingent against the newcomers and business people. Despite being a newcomer himself, Deutchman immediately casts his lot in with the old timers. He finds them "authentic" and charming in some sort of romantic way, and I'm not saying he was in the wrong to want to be one of them or to back their political causes, but it certainly affects his viewpoint. The author, like so many others, falls in love with Napa and Sonoma and sympathizes with anyone who wants to save it from over-development, and yet he himself is a usurper and a close friend of the very people building mega-mansions in the valleys.
There's a lot of good history here, and some chuckles as well, mostly at the expense of the quirky locals. I learned a lot, and the author's love for the area is certainly infectious. However, I think the author's whole point of view is rather suspect and I couldn't really warm up to him at the heart of the story. In the end, I liked but definitely did not love this book.
There's a lot of good history here, and some chuckles as well, mostly at the expense of the quirky locals. I learned a lot, and the author's love for the area is certainly infectious. However, I think the author's whole point of view is rather suspect and I couldn't really warm up to him at the heart of the story. In the end, I liked but definitely did not love this book.
September 20, 2010
I picked up this book purposedly for a travel article I am currently working on. So I have visited Napa and Sonoma Valley, but I think I need more indepth feel about the places, so imagine my surprise as I stumbled upon this book. Although the book is still far from finish, but it cease to amaze me so far.. and here are some of my fave pharagraphs.. I wonder why such book didn't get famous..
"A well known vineyard is known for zinfandel, a grape that had become popular in California. It wasn’t one of the classic grapes of old Europe, like cabernet sauvignon or chardonnay, that gave an advantage to the French because they had a head start of a thousand years. An American vintner specializing in zin instead of cab was like a classically trained pastry chef whose signature dish was her grandma’s country apple pie rather than tarte tatin or crème brûlée. She couldn’t affect a snobbery and she had to forgo the gratification of having her creations compared directly to those of French masters. Nonetheless, she made something that was beloved and delicious. "
"A well known vineyard is known for zinfandel, a grape that had become popular in California. It wasn’t one of the classic grapes of old Europe, like cabernet sauvignon or chardonnay, that gave an advantage to the French because they had a head start of a thousand years. An American vintner specializing in zin instead of cab was like a classically trained pastry chef whose signature dish was her grandma’s country apple pie rather than tarte tatin or crème brûlée. She couldn’t affect a snobbery and she had to forgo the gratification of having her creations compared directly to those of French masters. Nonetheless, she made something that was beloved and delicious. "
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 6, 2009
This book really addresses the problems of environmentalism, land development, overproduction, overuse, corruption, egoism, social stratification and the good life in Northern California withe flair, wit, and fairness. If you want to know how Napa became Napa and how Napa and Sonoma became the country's preeminent wine producing regions, read on. There are hilarious characters, political intrigues, wild chickens, luxurious mansions and a message about human development and its impact on the environment. Yes, there's a critique of capitalism built in too. In all, a 217-page, fast-reading, page turner. Enjoy!
June 9, 2008
This is less a book about wine country and more a chance for the author to brag about how his deci-millionaire and centi-millionaire friends let him stay for free in their wine country weekend homes.
I found it hard to focus on what he was saying b/c I kept trying to theorize why so many rich people wanted to be friends with him. A quick glance at the jacket picture and a lack of a sense of humor in the writing didn't explain things. I settled on childhood friends...or possibly imaginary.
I found it hard to focus on what he was saying b/c I kept trying to theorize why so many rich people wanted to be friends with him. A quick glance at the jacket picture and a lack of a sense of humor in the writing didn't explain things. I settled on childhood friends...or possibly imaginary.
January 25, 2013
The author of this book was fortunate to have several friends who own weekend homes in Sonoma and Napa California. While he was there during the week he got to know some of the people and learn about the politics going on with these two touristy spots. I found the politics of Sonoma boring but loved reading about the history of both wine producing spots. The author discovered that Napa is for the super rich who can afford the expensive wines and 5 star restaurants while Sonoma is mostly bohemian organic foodies.
August 11, 2011
I loved the details about Sonoma Valley and it's history (gorgeous), but I found the author to be an obnoxious cultural snob and sadly not even an interesting cultural snob. In the end this book comes across as endlessly shallow and lacking the depth of characterization that comes from a truly thoughtful writer. This would have been two stars for me if not for the compelling subject matter.
January 25, 2009
Not a researched effort by the author, but more of a tale about his life and times in the Sonoma Valley. He compares the Sonoma Valley as a sleepy town trying to prevent big industry in, unlike Napa Valley. Good short read. The chickens are a fun storyline.
February 23, 2009
I liked this book alot going in. Very informative, lots of juicy gossip, but it lagged towards the end for me,waaaaay too much detailed info on the glassy-winged sharpshooter. I kept waiting for him to move on, but thats what he left his readers with in the end.
October 11, 2009
Going to Napa in September! This is just getting me ready!
Was trying to read this before my trip but I was SO much better after I was there. I meant more to me having been to many of the areas that are mentioned.
Was trying to read this before my trip but I was SO much better after I was there. I meant more to me having been to many of the areas that are mentioned.
March 19, 2012
I enjoyed the book quite a lot. I didn't expect to have that much of a story to tell. The various characters,the locales, and the comparison between the two valleys was enjoyable as well as very informative.
February 6, 2013
I read this book twice, and I happen to live in Sonoma during the time. For me it was a good read because a lot of the characters in my town were familiar to me. It's a great audiobook for driving through the Sonoma and Napa valleys.
April 10, 2015
This was a nice accompaniment to my trip to Sonoma. It not only helped me understand the area better, but led me to some lovely spots, such as Gundlach Bundschu winery, and the Basque Boulangerie. It was nice having a backstory for it all. What a charming paradise. Sonoma over Napa any day!
January 25, 2008
Living in the Bay Area, I'm up in Napa & Sonoma often so I enjoyed this gossipy, fun little "history".
August 15, 2008
I learned that I really want to eat hand-crafted cheese in Sonoma.
September 13, 2008
a somewhat disheartening view of the real life behind the glamour of wine country. lots of history and wine world gossip
July 10, 2009
Sense of evolution of Napa & Sonoma - a place I love. Easy to see how love of a place by many can also destroy the soul of what made it beautiful
August 29, 2009
Preparing for our Sonoma trip in Aug.
June 24, 2010
A somewhat interesting history on the differences between the Napa and Sonoma valleys. It wouldn't have been as interesting if I hadn't been vacationing in the area for a significant amount of time.
October 6, 2010
I just didn't like this book at all, but I did make it to the end and to tell the truth, I don't know how. I ended up scanning alot of it and thought it would get better, but it never did!
May 6, 2011
Really intriguing, the area is so corrupt! A must read!
October 9, 2011
Good accounting of the story behind the story - the small winemakers and their everyday lives in the Napa(and more particularly) Sonoma Valleys.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews