![]() The Valley's proximity to Silicon Valley means it has lured members of the tech community looking for a more bucolic setting, too. France's finest producers, including Domaine de la Romanee-Conti's Aubert de Villaine, and the owners of Châteaux Mouton Rothschild, La Fleur-Petrus and Rauzan-Segla, are now also a part of the Napa landscape. From being a fledgling region, Napa Cabernet Sauvignon has taken its place at wine's top table, sitting comfortably alongside fine Bordeaux and Burgundy in the cellars of the cognoscenti. The Napa Valley experienced a Phoenix-like revival in the second half of the 20th century. Wineries flank the main highway, and affluent visitors flock to the region in their millions, all here for one thing: wine. Vines cover almost every plantable spare block of the 48km (30 miles) of varied terrain and diverse soil. Today, the Valley bears little resemblance to the Napa of the early 1950s. Only the most obstinate vineyards remained alongside fields of grazing cows, walnut and plum trees, following the triple whammy of phylloxera, World War One and Prohibition. Yet at the end of World War Two, there were just 13 wineries left in the Valley. The first grapevines had been planted here in the late 1830s and success had quickly followed. While studying communication and public policy, he discovered that nearby Napa Valley was the perfect location for extracurricular activities: "The girls liked coming up here, the wine-tasting was free and they didn't check your ID."Īt that time, Napa was little more than a rural backwater with a trickle of inquisitive visitors. His love affair with the wine region began in the late 1950s, when he was a fresher at UC Berkeley, across San Francisco Bay. It has taken a lifetime's hard work, and a self-confessed bit of luck, for Bill Harlan to create his business. Amid thick woodlands, it is as if Harlan Estate is a land that Napa forgot, and which, if founder and proprietor Bill Harlan's "200-year plan" comes to fruition, will remain so, except for the few acres of precious vines that have turned this once-overlooked part of the Napa Valley into the maker of some of the world's most expensive and sought-after wines. ![]() But then they have had little indication that they are not the rightful proprietors of this land over the past three decades its owner has left them largely undisturbed. ![]() In a rugged wedge of California's Mayacamas Mountains, coyotes, bears and deer roam freely, as if they own the forests covering its unyielding terrain. One of the first generation of superstar modern-wine growers in California's Napa Valley, Bill Harlan – founder of the renowned Harlan Estate – is facing a new challenge: passing on a successful family business to his children. ![]()
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