When 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 the Napa Valley, which epitomized elitism, prestige, and wealthy excess, and the neighboring Sonoma Valley, a ragtag bohemian enclave so stubbornly backward that rambunctious chickens wandered freely through town. A Tale of Two Valleys captures these stranger-than-fiction locales with the wit of a Tom Wolfe novel 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 dishy glimpse behind the scenes of the wine world, A Tale of Two Valleys makes for intoxicating reading.

14.4