Napa Valley AVA
Napa Valley is an American Viticultural Area located in Napa County. Napa Valley is considered one of the top wine regions in the United States and the world. The combination of Mediterranean climate, geography and geology of the valley are conducive to growing quality wine grapes. John Patchett established the valley's first commercial vineyard in 1858. In 1861 Charles Krug established Napa Valley's first commercial winery in St. Helena. Viticulture in Napa suffered several setbacks in the late 1800s and early 1900s, including an outbreak of the vine disease phylloxera, the legal institution of Prohibition, and the Great Depression. The wine industry in Napa Valley recovered, and helped by the results of the Paris Wine Tasting of 1976, came to be seen as capable of producing the best quality wine.
Growth, Rural and Agricultural Preservation
Napa County has maintained a rural agricultural environment in Napa Valley. The Williamson Act* was enacted by the California Legislature to give landowners property tax relief for designating their land for agricultural purposes. In 1968 the county seized an opportunity under Williamson Act to preserve farmland between Napa and Calistoga by enacting the first Agriculture Presserve in California through restrictive zoning, rather than let property owners use the Williamson Act to do the same thing voluntarily. Initially, the preserve encompassed 23,000 acres, since founding it has grown to more than 30,000 acres.
The county has resisted encroachment on the preserve since it was created with voters reaffirming their desire keep it intact on several occasions. In 1990 voters passed Measure J adopting an initiative prohibiting the Board of Supervisiors from changing the General Plan designation of any agricultural land to any other use until the year 2020 unless there is a ⅔ majority vote to adopt such changes. Measure J was reaffirmed by a 5-2 vote of the California Supreme Court in 1995 in the case of Devita v. County of Napa.The General Plan is the document in which the zoning is defined.
The Land Trust of Napa County was founded in 1976 by a group of local citizens with a mission to protect the natural diversity, scenic open space and agricultural vitality of the county. The trust acquires conservation easements, facilitates land transfers to local, state and federal agencies along with accepting outright donations of land within and outside the boundary of the agricultural preserve. The trust now covers over 50,000 acres . Napa Valley had been one of the greatest prune growing areas in California. In the late 1970s the more lucrative grape growing became the major crop of the valley.
While establishment of the agricultural preserve and the land trust has slowed residential development in much of the county, residential growth within the incorporated cities has continued at a moderate pace. Several substantial homes have been built on the hills surrounding the valley in areas not covered by the preserve or the land trust. A large portion of the land south of the City of Napa remained undeveloped for many decades until the 1980s. Several wine bottling facilities and wine storage warehouses now stand on what was once vacant land. A number of light industries have also sprung up in this region as new business parks have been built. The growth of American Canyon, Napa County’s southernmost and newest city; incorporated in 1992 has prompted the establishment of several new retail outlets in the southern end of the county in recent years. American Canyon has also established a green belt preserve of over 1,000 acres on the western and eastern sides of the city.
*The Williamson Act of the US state of California (officially, the California Land Conservation Act of 1965) is a California law that provides relief of property tax to owners of farmland and open-space land in exchange for a ten-year agreement that the land will not be developed or otherwise converted to another use. The motivation for the Williamson Act is to promote voluntary land conservation, particularly farmland conservation.
edited source: wikipedia.org/Napa County/Napa Valley/Williamson Act