The Battle Is On for the Soul—and Future—of Napa Wine Country

In February a Napa County Superior Court judge handed down a tentative ruling favoring a controversial vineyard project on Atlas Peak, Walt Ranch, that would cut down 14,000 mature trees—some of them 300 years old. Locals have been worried about erosion, traffic, and the irrigation demands a 209-acre vineyard will put on an already sensitive watershed. They’ve also feared that the vintners behind it, who own Hall Wines LLC in St. Helena, Calif., secretly plan to add a residential complex. Natives have been fighting the project for years with protests, lawsuits, letters, and noisy testimony before the Board of Supervisors. At one hearing, a man called the co-owner of Hall Wines, Kathryn Hall, the devil.

Such are the fiery struggles at the heart of James Conaway’s Napa at Last Light: America’s Eden in an Age of Calamity. The third in an impassioned trilogy, it makes clear the stakes at hand, including the fate of businesses and the community, and the future of the region’s natural resources, which development could irreversibly damage.