Napa: Wine library pairs bookworms, history buffs

The Napa Valley Wine Library, which is housed at St. Helena’s public library, maintains one of the country’s most comprehensive collections of writing about wine.

Since being organized in 1962, it has acquired 3,500 books, as well as periodicals, newsletters and oral histories from three decades starting in the 1960s — the golden era of Napa’s development.

The library and its related nonprofit association (which funds many book purchases and holds a series of events) were conceived in the early 1960s by a group of friends:

Fisher had been frustrated in locating source material for her research on a history of California wine, and the group — along with many Napa wineries — decided to raise money for a repository of wine writing.

Many of these activities have been going on since Napa was more a rural weekend destination for San Franciscans than the cornerstone of the state’s wine industry.

The summer I got out of college,” recalls Carolyn Martini, the association’s current president and daughter of one of its founders, Louis P. Martini, “I got to fill the paper plates with crackers and dump the dump buckets, and got my first formal education on wine tasting.

[...] this being Napa, there is still an opportunity to drink wine.

Since 1963, the library association has hosted an annual tasting as an opportunity for Napa’s vintners to come together and taste each others’ wares.

Because it’s hosted at the public library, the public can access most of the books; those with a Napa/Solano library card can check out materials.

The fruit from the Backyard (named for Barney Rhodes, the library association’s first president), like that from what’s now called the library vineyard, is used in top bottlings by Turley Wine Cellars.

With its old head-pruned vines, the library vineyard sits directly on the street, making it easy to gaze at a bit of true Napa Valley history — one that’s nearly as fascinating as the books inside.