'It Was a Fight. It's a Fight to This Day': Environmental Activism in Napa
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WINE & RATINGS ‘It Was a Fight. It’s a Fight to This Day’: Environmental Activism in Napa Valley BY SHEA SWENSON Gamble Family Vineyards / Photo by Sarah Risk When Mary Ann McGuire landed in Napa Valley as a 20-year-old in 1960, she felt a special connection to the area. “We saw it as a bountiful garden,” she says. “I felt this sense of power that came from the land…For me, it carried a spiritual imprint that a mother feels towards a child that you want to protect.” For her rst few years in the Valley, McGuire, who had moved to the region with her new husband, cattle rancher George Gamble, saw no reason to act on that protective instinct. But in the mid-60s, California entered an era of development. And as more agricultural acreage gave way to subdivisions and shopping centers, the grape growers, farmers, ranchers and residents of Napa County began to feel the pressure of what that development might mean for the region. Mary Ann McGuire, who moved to Napa Valley in 1960 / Photo Courtesy of Gamble Family Vineyards For McGuire, that pressure rst came to a head in 1965, when the United States Army Corps of Engineers stripped away the vegetation along the banks of Conn River, which ran straight through their ranch. It was replaced by a lining of concrete. When McGuire learned the same concrete fate was destined for each regional waterway, she wouldn’t stand for it, and neither would her neighbors. The community, connected by phone calls and door-to-door outreach, opposed the waterway project along with the development of a six-lane highway through Mt. St. Helena proposed by California Department of Transportation. Together, McGuire and others got both plans quashed. Napa Valley’s residents back then saw a future of land covered in greenery and grapevines, but they also identied the fragility of that vision. “We understood that maybe we got a freeway off [the] books, and the river thing defeated for the time,” says McGuire. “But nothing was going to stop the developers from coming up here.” They had seen it happen just miles away in Santa Clara Valley. “In the mid-60s, Santa Clara Valley had pretty well been on its way to extinction as a place for grape growing,” says Warren Winiarski, famed Napa Valley winemaker and the founder and former proprietor of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. In fact, Santa Clara Valley had more than 100,000 acres of orchards in 1940. That diminished to under 6,000 acres by 1990, according to Napa Valley Grapegrowers, a trade organization built to preserve and promote the region’s vineyards. “The idea in Napa was to avoid that destiny and seek to preserve agriculture as a way of life,” says Winiarski. So, community members brainstormed a way to keep Napa’s land for farming. “We thought, ‘How can we enact some legislation that will write that into law and then protect it? How can we preserve this wonderful valley for agriculture?’” says McGuire. Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ Fay 9 Cabernet Sauvignon / Photo courtesy of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars The answer was the Napa Valley Agricultural Preserve, a set of zoning laws enacted in 1968 to protect agricultural areas. The rst legislation of its kind in the U.S., it declared that agricultural use was the best fate for Napa’s fertile foothills. Initially, the Ag Preserve protected 23,000 acres of land, a number that has since increased to more than 38,000 acres. Agriculture is the only commercial activity allowed on the protected lands. The Preserve also prohibits land being broken down to less than 40 acres, which prevents subdivisions and future development, according to Napa Valley Grapegrowers. “I have nothing against subdivisions, but houses you can have anyplace,” says Winiarski. “There’s only a few places with potential for the great beauty in the fruit and the wine that’s made here.” The whole community needed to get on board with the project. A committee was formed, chaired by Jack Davies, winemaker of Schramsberg at the time. Everyone had a role to play. For Winiarski, a Napa newcomer at the time, that meant going door-to-door in the area he lived, Angwin, to advocate for the preserve. “Since I lived up there, I was given the responsibility of getting that community, Pacic Union College, and the president of the college [to support the movement],” he says. But not everyone backed it. Unlike the highway and waterway issues, which McGuire says unied many across the valley, the Ag Preserve saw some backlash. “There was much local consternation,” says Ren Harris, founder of Napa Valley Grapegrowers and past president and owner of Paradigm Winery. “You know, those who didn’t like people telling them what they can do with their land.” Harris was an avid supporter of the initiative and attended every hearing held by the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors. Ultimately, it passed both boards unanimously, he says. But even in success, the growers saw the need to strengthen the protection to prevent it from being chipped away over time or challenged by future governments. At the Ag Preserve’s inception, Napa Valley wasn’t the internationally respected wine region it is today. “The only way we could preserve the valley was to make the world-class wine,” says McGuire. “We had to become a Bordeaux, a Burgundy. We had to develop this wine industry.” When the Ag Preserve was implemented in 1968, Napa Valley had 14,000 acres of vineyards. By 1975, that swelled to 24,000 acres. That next year brought the now-legendary “Judgment of Paris,” where Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars’ 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon, crafted by Winiarski, and a 1973 Chardonnay from Chateau Montelena won rst place. It was a rst for California, and it exemplied the quality of wine that Napa Valley could produce. Since the Ag Preserve’s inception, not a single acre of protected agricultural land has been converted to urban use, according to the Napa Valley Grapegrowers. In Napa, the preservation mindset seems to have been passed down like much of the land itself. The next generation of Napa Valley growers, like Tom Gamble, an Oakville- based vintner, McGuire’s son, have taken the mantle. In 1990, the younger generation pushed through an ordinance known as Measure J, which required a referendum to convert protected agricultural land to nonagricultural use, rather than by a vote by the Board of Supervisors. This move was expanded in 2008 by Measure P, which signicantly strengthened the integrity of the Ag Preserve until at least 2058. “This love of the land, my mom and my dad and my other forebears passed that on to us and really led by example,” says Gamble. “So, I think that’s why you still have the Farm Bureau and the vintners and other organizations wanting to work so hard to preserve this place.” Gamble Family Vineyards in the Spring / Photo by Sarah Risk Gamble, who counts sustainability as a core value of his Gamble Family Vineyards, learned by the example of his parents and their peers not to take Napa Valley for granted. “People think it just happened or it’s always been like this, and it hasn’t,” he says. “It was a ght. It’s a ght to this day.” The consensus among Napa Valley’s grape growers is that without the Ag Preserve, the region’s fertile land would be paved over and populated. “I rmly believe that without the Ag Preserve, Napa Valley would probably not be much of a factor in the world of wine today,” says Harris. “We have to think about things that support that preservation, which means looking forward, anticipating problems, taking account of limitations and acting in a way to continue making the beautiful wines that we have in the past,” says Winiarski. “I feel to the extent that I’m able, I should continue to make whatever contribution I can to that same cause that I worked for in the beginning, to avoid things that would diminish the valley’s ability to go on into the future.” Comments Sign up for Wine Enthusiast Newsletters Enter your email Submit Welcome to winemag.com! By using our website and/or subscribing to our newsletter, you agree to our use of cookies and the terms of our Privacy Policy WINE & RATINGS From Floral to Flinty, The Indigenous White Wine Grapes of Southern Italy BY KERIN O’KEEFE Griilo grapes at Tenuta Whitaker / Photo by Salvo Mancuso Some of Italy’s most fascinating white wines are made in Campania, in the country’s south, and on two main islands, Sardinia and Sicily. There, millennia-old native grapes dominate. Scrupulous vineyard management and modern vinication methods yield inimitable, savory white wines loaded with personality. Discover southern Italy’s best whites made with indigenous grapes. Fiano grapes at Villa Raiano / Photo courtesy of Villa Raiano Fiano Region: Campania Fiano is most associated with Campania, where it’s widely grown. Native to the region, the grape produces structured whites that range from medium- to full-bodied and have beeswax and oral aromas. Their rich orchard fruit avors are often accented with compelling, smoky mineral sensations, honey, aromatic herb and hazelnut. The best have great energy as well as intriguing complexity. To maintain freshness and aromas, Fiano producers most often vinify in steel tanks. The grape thrives in the hilly district of Irpinia, around the town of Avellino, where wines from the Fiano di Avellino DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita) yield mineral-driven versions that possess great aging potential.