Ep 552: The Greats - Napa Valley

Wine for Normal People

Alcohol, Lifestyle, Arts, Education, Food, Wine, Dining, Grapes

4.6 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2025

⏱️ 67 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Napa Valley is unquestionably one of the great wine regions of the world. Located about 50 mi/80 km north of San Francisco, Napa is renowned for its decadent Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay and its glamourous, fancy and expensive tasting rooms. Napa only represents 4% of California’s wine grape harvest, but it holds the highest reputation among all US regions.

But the region isn’t all show – it has excellent terroir to make world class wines.

Photo: Napa Valley Vineyard. Source: Pixabay

Napa Valley stretches southeast to northwest for approximately 35 miles (60 km) from just north of the San Pablo Bay to the northern reaches of Calistoga. Nestled between the Vaca and Mayacamas mountain ranges, the Valley is about 4 miles wide at its widest point. It contains half the soil types in the world and its mountains, benchlands, and valleys have so much diversity that each wine made here reflects a different character.

In this show I go over the history, the geology and terroir, the main grapes and wine styles, and then I go into detail on the 16 American Viticultural Areas in Napa and what to expect from each.

This is a comprehensive look at this great wine region of the world that made the reputation of American wine as we know it today.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Wine for Normal People, the podcast for people who like wine, but not the snobbery that goes with it.
0:15.7	I'm your host Elizabeth Schneider, author of the Wine for Normal People book and certified wine dork.
0:21.3	Do you want the best selection in wine available?
0:25.4	And do you want it delivered right to your door?
0:27.3	If you go to wineaccess.com slash normal, you'll get four shipments a year of six amazing
0:33.0	bottles that I select around a theme for just $150, which includes shipping.
0:38.5	Wine Access makes it so easy to learn about and explore the world of wine.
0:42.6	Check it out today.
0:43.4	Go to wine access.com slash normal to join my wine club or wine access.com slash WFMP
0:49.9	to get into the site and let them know you found out about them through me.
0:53.1	And listen in the middle of the show for more details. It's been a little while since I've done a show on the
1:00.5	greats and given that I have started working on the book that will be basically the same as this
1:07.8	series, a tribute to the great wine regions of the world, how they
1:11.6	became famous, why they are considered great. I figured I may as well continue on this march
1:17.7	in the podcast so that when you finally get the book, which hopefully I will finish in the next
1:24.0	year or so, then we'll have a basis and you can go back and listen to some of these
1:27.8	shows that were the genesis of some of the chapters of the book. So I am excited and I cannot
1:34.5	believe I've never covered Napa Valley on its own. I guess I've covered the judgment of
1:40.3	Paris, which is a very important moment in Napa's history. And I've covered California. And I've
1:45.9	talked about Napa and had Napa producers on. And so I'm excited to be doing that today. Before we
1:52.3	get started, I have two things. First of all, if you have never reviewed the podcast and you
1:57.7	like it, if you don't like it, please don't review the podcast. But if you like
	...

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