Book Review: A Tale of Two Valleys

Review

A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth, and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma, by Alan Deutschman. (Broadway Books, 221 pages, 2003). $22.95.

With such an unwieldy title, I feared that this book might turn out to be an impenetrable sociological treatise. Fortunately and unfortunately, it’s more breezy and gossipy than that. It begins rather more ominously, though, warning of a coming plague.

The glassy-winged sharpshooter is a small insect that feeds on, and kills, vines. It had been ravaging vineyards in the southern part of California and was now moving north. The people of Sonoma and Napa were preparing for the onslaught and it seemed to stir up grievances, between the rich newcomers drawn by the lure of more riches in the wine business and the “townies” who had lived here for generations.

Alan Deutschman was in a unique position to observe life in the two valleys, staying with wealthy friends over the course of a year. But I’m not sure that he’s aware that this very fact tends to compromise his apparent sympathy with the “regular folks” against the rich newcomers.

Where the book is most entertaining is in its comparison of the cultural differences between the two valleys. Sonoma has long been a bohemian-friendly place where rugged individualism is tolerated, even admired. One telling example is near the beginning of the book when the Sonoma town council has to decide what to do about the large number of chickens freely roaming around the town square. Napa, by comparison, is the playground of the rich and the corporate. While Sonoma farmers grow a number of other crops (mostly fruit), their Napa brethren seem to have torn out everything else to plant wine grapes. Napa hosts many more wine “entrepreneurs”, people who want to make a lot of money and who don’t care much for anything or anyone that might remind them that making wine is basically just a type of farming.

But of course, with success comes compromise. Sonoma is changing, and Deutschman planted himself in the middle of a number of political battles that seemed to be about what Sonoma would become. Of course, the most important was how to deal with the glassy-winged sharpshooter. Most of the people who actually lived in Sonoma year-round were opposed to a plan to dump massive amounts of insecticide on the crop, but their victory (in the name of preserving their way of life, and their health) could mean devastation for the very commodity that keeps their economy afloat.

This small book gives the reader a glimpse of the wine country that the visitor never sees. When the tasting rooms are closed and the tourists go home, the residents of these idyllic places are engaged in a struggle with their own “success”. The insect problem almost seems a blessing in disguise to some of them. A Tale of Two Valleys scratches the surface of some very important issues facing tourism and the wine industry worldwide. As more and more business people and tourists flock to Napa, or Sonoma, or Tuscany, or New Zealand, or any number of other picturesque wine spots around the world, those places lose a part of their souls. The glassy-winged sharpshooter is at least a more honest predator.