A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma [Paperback]

Alan Deutschman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 11, 2004

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

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this brief, intoxicating book, Vanity Fair contributor Deutschman (The Second Coming of Steve Jobs) chronicles the year or so he spent as a freeloading guest at some of the finest homes in the Sonoma and Napa valleys in the heart of California's near-mythic wine country. He eavesdrops on conversations at the cafe and bookstore, talks to locals at the Tuesday farmer's market and indulges in bottle after bottle of fine wine (one even costing half a million dollars) at the best tables. While he is not shy about writing about his personal pleasure with life in the valley, he is no mere hedonist. He's also a fine reporter, who documents the force new tech money pouring in from Silicon Valley is exerting on the shabby gentility of the wine region. After revisiting some of the same territory covered earlier by James Conaway in Napa and The Far Side of Eden, Deutschman picks up the story in present-day Sonoma with the community's efforts to defeat the very same kind of luxury resorts that first made Napa the darling of glossy travel magazines. He serves up the drama glass by glass, starting with a rather mellow debate over loose chickens in the town square, building to the battle between the town folk and a luxury hotel developer, and culminating in an election fight between the new professional class and the bohemians for control of the Sonoma City Council. What remains longest in the memory are his portraits of the wine makers themselves-some known stars, such as Jean Phillips, proprietor of cult winery Screaming Eagle, and others less so. Rarely has such an exclusive world and its inhabitants been made so accessible.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Day-tripping with Vanity Fair contributing editor Deutschman in California.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Broadway (May 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767907043
• ISBN-13: 978-0767907040
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #553,120 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Better than expected and surprisingly familiar, August 31, 2005

By 

C. V. Manning - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma (Hardcover)

Two things struck me about the book. First, the eccentric characters were not unlike those that one runs into routinely in a venue I'm more familiar with--small town deep south. Though flavored of California, of wine country, and of blue-state sensibilities, dress any one of the Sonomans in a blue sports coat and khakis and stick a bourbon-and-coke in his hand and you have yourself an everyday southerner of some stripe. Rich, poor, pretentious, humble, genuine, phony, romantic, hateful, kind, any of these just so long as slightly eccentric-cum-affected. Secondly, I noted a similarity in the characters' efforts to find transcendent meaning by pursuing pastimes with literal religious fervor. Wine, wine making, environmentalism, green space preservation, leisure--all find their place as the god of some Sonoman who otherwise found deity deceased in college and liked it that way, or so he thought. In parallel, take a less than rare southerner and find him worshiping on the gridiron any given Saturday or gleaning metaphysical truth from a blues man in a juke joint and you'll see the reverse image of your friendly Sonoman. I thought the book was well written and, intentionally or no, painted a clear picture of postmodern man's failure to find meaning. No idol satisfies, no passion fulfills, and A Tale of Two Valleys depicts that nicely.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bacchanalian Excesses, May 2, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma (Hardcover)

Deutschman's book artfully chronicles the misadventures of "typical" Northern Californians in their native habitat. They're all here: the iconoclastic hippies, annoying activists, groovy corporate dropouts, disgustingly rich tech geeks, tyrannically earnest organic farmers and insufferable oenophiles. He pulls back the curtain on these spoiled, pampered, pompous, self-indulgent Northern Californians and their -OK, I'll admit it-utterly charmed, fascinating lives.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Reverse Snobbery, July 25, 2003

By 

Stephen G. Kusheloff (Sunbury, Pennsylvania United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma (Hardcover)

In paragraph after paragraph, Deutschman lauds the people of Sonoma, whom he sees as "reg'lar folks," while excoriating people from Napa, most San Franciscans, and anybody who stops at a winery for wine tasting. This is reverse snobbery at its worst. I quickly tired of Deutschman's pronouncements of who's a phony, and who's pretentious. Napa and Sonoma have plenty to offer, Alan. Leave your sophomoric value judgements out of it, especially when you revel in being a guest at a rich out-of-towner's weekend retreat in Sonoma.