Controversy uncorked Napa Valley's power, politics and people are held up to the light in James Conaway's 'Far Side of Eden'

By Mike Dunne -- Sacramento Bee Food Editor Published 2:15 a.m. PDT Wednesday, October 23, 2002
The glassy-winged sharpshooter, carrier of a disease that eviscerates vineyards, isn't the only pest on the minds of Napa Valley grape growers and winemakers. James Conaway has been spotted about the valley again.
Vintners wary of Conaway had a chance to trap him the other evening, when he appeared at a forum in the auditorium of St. Helena Elementary School.
But they didn't show.
Could it be the valley's winemakers actually are thicker-skinned than the grapes they crush? "I don't know if it's that or if they realize they don't have much of an argument," Conaway said afterward. "Also, plenty of people in the valley do like the book."
The book. That would be Conaway's "The Far Side of Eden: New Money, Old Land, and the Battle for Napa Valley" (Houghton Mifflin, $28), the official publication date of which is Thursday, though advance review copies have been circulating about the valley for weeks.
It's Conaway's second book on the Napa Valley in 12 years, and like the first -- "Napa: The Story of an American Eden" -- it gives readers an often-troubling slant on the nation's most glamorous agrarian enclave.
His candid look at power struggles within the valley also seems to be rankling some Napa movers and shakers, to judge by the chilly reception he got when he returned from his home in Washington, D.C., to promote the book.
The lack of confrontation at the forum was one sign of that. Then there was the matter of the two venues that turned down his request to stage his appearance with a local radio talk-show host. One was Copia, the posh Napa complex for promoting food, wine and the arts, built by Robert Mondavi and other valley vintners who are portrayed less than regally in Conaway's book.
Kathleen Iudice, spokeswoman for Copia, said Conaway was turned away because of scheduling conflicts, and denied that vintners on the center's board of directors exerted pressure on the staff to exclude him. "The board is never consulted on program issues," Iudice said.
When he finally did get to speak at the St. Helena school, Conaway addressed the issue by saying, "It really hurts to be held in less esteem than a ceramic figurine of a defecating Santa Claus." This was a pointed reference to the last controversy to embroil Copia, an exhibit early this year of tiny defecating sculptures, including a nun, the pope, Fidel Castro and Santa Claus, inspired by a Catalonian custom celebrating fertilization.
At any rate, "The Far Side of Eden," like "Napa" before it, digs deep under the valley's shallow topsoil to uncover rocky tales of disputatious neighbors, strident environmentalists, ambivalent public officials and highly competitive vintners, all wrangling over the area's precious dirt.
Conaway is a public-policy wonk, but he has the eye and the hand of a poet, and recognizes that to attract an audience to such potentially dry topics as the inner workings of Napa County's "watershed task force" and a struggle for control of the local farm bureau you need people of fire and flair to help tell the tale.
To Conaway, the Napa Valley is a misleadingly pretty and placid stage upon which swashbuckling vineyardists and relentless environmentalists are dueling in one act after another over issues like planting vineyards high on the valley's hills, safeguarding habitat, regulating traffic and curbing erosion.
Conaway animates the Napa Valley's continuing conflicts by following the words and deeds of several vivid characters. In his telling, selfishness and myopia commonly characterize the valley's more driven vineyardists and winemakers, but environmentalists don't exactly come off heroic, often sounding as petulant and uncompromising as the area's more arrogant vintners.
Several of the book's principals, particularly those whose portraits are less than flattering, didn't return The Bee's phone calls for comment. Others had no significant arguments with Conaway's depiction of them or his take on the issues.
"That's one of the chances you take when you talk with someone who is authoring a book," said Napa environmentalist Chris Malan when asked of Conaway's look at her motivations and techniques as she tries to persuade county officials to more sternly oversee vineyard development. "Part of the interviews do get personal. That's part of the game."
Longtime valley grape grower Stuart Smith quibbles that Conaway's portrayal made him seem a more "reactionary, right-wing, property-rights character" than he actually is, but said the book does accurately grasp the valley's land-use feuds. "He gets the flavor and intensity of the issues that are really tearing this valley apart," Smith said.
Volker Eisele, another longtime valley vineyardist and winemaker, and also a pivotal player in "The Far Side of Eden," praised Conaway for his accuracy and balance. "I cannot say he was sloppy or did character assassination," Eisele said.
If his neighbors are upset, it's because they aren't used to seeing the valley's infighting aired openly, indicated Eisele. "Every periodical treats us (winemakers) as demigods who just descended from heaven to bring this nectar to humans. The wines are praised, but other issues are ignored. They don't look at the political views or what the owners are doing to the environment. ... Then someone suddenly holds up a mirror to say, 'This is you guys, this is what you do.' It's not what we are used to," Eisele said.
During the St. Helena forum, and in a subsequent interview, Conaway said he was inspired to write a sequel to "Napa" because of dramatic growth in the valley during the 1990s and because pressures on the valley's resources are intensifying.
Despite the country's shaky economy, new money continues to pour into the Napa Valley as people who made a fortune in high technology, real estate, law and other pursuits unrelated to farming are drawn to planting a vineyard and putting their name on a label in the nation's most highly regarded wine region.
"This distinguishes them from other merely wealthy people, of which there are a lot," Conaway said. "It's a way to get instant social recognition. They are elevated suddenly into the ranks of people who supposedly know wine and who have sophisticated tastes in other things, though that's not always the case."
Their heavy footprints on the valley's prized and diminishing soil not only may hurt the environment, they're often in poor taste, Conaway argues. He laments trophy "McMansions" marring the ridgelines, vineyards closing off public access to the Napa River and clumsy efforts at historic preservation more in the style of a Roman emperor than the area's own low-key pioneers.
The valley's vintners spend millions to market their wines, but they've done a poor job telling their story to their neighbors, who have become so agitated by the concentration of vineyards and wineries in their midst they've enacted numerous measures to soften their impact, much to the consternation of winemakers, notes Conaway.
Smith, for one, frets that restrictions now are so numerous and costly for vineyardists that the continued viability of the valley's wine industry is at risk.
"Napa Valley grape growers are the most highly regulated agriculturists in the country. With the amount of regulations being brought down on us, can we continue to compete globally?" Smith muses. "Wine grapes are the only thing that can compete with subdivisions here. Farmers and environmentalists should be locked at the hip, fighting development and growth."
Usually, however, they've been at odds. But as Conaway shows, vintners often have been at odds with each other, just as environmentalists haven't always concurred on steps to preserve the valley for agriculture rather than allow it to be converted into a bedroom community for the Bay Area.
Despite its compact size, scenic beauty, influx of wealth, glamorous resorts, celebrated restaurants, and its identity as the country's premier wine region, the Napa Valley is struggling with challenges relevant to the rest of the country, Conaway believes.
"People come into an undeveloped area and then want all the services they had in the city. They move into fragile areas and build bigger houses than necessary to be happy in. All this influx of money drives up prices for people who do live there, driving out citizens who have been there all along. You see this from Nantucket to Laguna Beach," says Conaway, who, when he isn't writing books -- "The Far Side of Eden" is his ninth -- is editor of Preservation, the magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C.
Though Napa Valley residents have imposed several measures to help preserve local agriculture, starting with the nation's first "agricultural preserve zone" in 1968, more needs to be done, Conaway argues. Currently, for one, Napans are debating proposed "setbacks" -- the pulling back of vineyards from the banks of the Napa River and other streams to allow natural vegetation to return.
Conaway says valley residents, newcomers especially, need to "lower their expectations" -- not build trophy homes on ridges, not plant vineyards up to the edge of the river, not expand wineries to attract more tourists.
Ideally, such restraint should be voluntary, but he doesn't see that happening.
"Voluntary restrictions don't work. People don't do what is in the common good," Conaway says. "We need some laws to encourage people to do that."
As a Napa County supervisor, Mel Varrelman has had a hand in resolving the valley's growth issues over the past 20 years. As he nears retirement -- his successor is to be chosen in the Nov. 5 election -- Varrelman doesn't see land-use disputes ending anytime soon.
"Most of us who live here want to keep it rural and agricultural. We understand the need to keep a strong agriculture base, to remain a community of small towns and to have adequate open space. We have fought those wars over the years," Varrelman says. "Most of us are pulling on those oars together, but in determining how to get to the end creates a lot of turbulence."
Just ask James Conaway.
About the Writer ---------------------------
Mike Dunne is The Bee's Food Editor. He can be reached at (916) 321-1143 or <mailto:mdunne@sacbee.com>mdunne@sacbee.com.