Napa Valley – Ready to Serve Its 3 Million Annual Visitors
Don’t let the recent earthquake stop you on your tracks to Napa Valley.
A picture of luscious, ripe grapes in a press release has this for a caption: “It’s raining grapes in Napa Valley!”
The harvest is earlier this year and Napa’s vintners and growers expect an abundant, high-quality harvest again this year.
With most of the region’s activities and tourism tied up to wine making, a good harvest is a good indication of a robust economy. Despite having one of the driest winters on record, it is still predicted that the harvest will be as good as the two years past.
This much can be gleaned from Napa Valley Harvest 2014 Underway by the California Wine Navigator.
The good harvest has been attributed by Ludovic Dervin, Mumm Napa winemaker, to moderately warm spring. For this year, the world can expect the usual activities in Napa Valley to be just as colorful and festive for the yearly throng of about 3 million tourists.
“To virtually capture the spirit of the Napa Valley harvest, the NVV invites wine enthusiasts from anywhere in the world to follow the action over the coming weeks on its dynamic and multi-faceted Harvest Napa Valley 2014 web page at http://napavintners.com/harvest, featuring:
Up-to-the-minute social media posts and photos, often contributed directly by the winemakers themselves, capturing harvest in Napa Valley using #napaharvest
Weekly updates drawn from vintner “reporters” working throughout Napa Valley
A harvest crossword puzzle, word search game and other test-your-harvest-knowledge quizzes
A hand-illustrated depiction of the year-long life cycle of a fine wine grape explaining exactly what happens from vine to wine.”
Despite the earthquake, tourism seems unfazed. For one, about two-thirds of the tourists are coming in from other regions in California like San Francisco and just stay for a few hours in Napa Valley.
Hotels are also reporting that rooms are booked for the ongoing harvest season as well as in October when the awaited grape crush is slated, further indicating that the earthquake will have but a muted effect on tourism in this winery region.
The August 24 tremor, one of the strongest in 25 years at magnitude 6.0, has not caused any significant damage to the grapes on the vine in vineyards according to the Napa Valley Vintners, a nonprofit trade association based in the region.
Inventories in cellars, stores and certain wineries, however, were not as lucky. Those that suffered damages may make these individual wineries to experience temporary shortages, but these are not expected to make any significant dent on the overall wine inventory in the region.
If you are among the 3 million tourists visiting Napa Valley any day soon, go ahead.
Napa Valley’s tourism industry is unfazed by the earthquake; it is ready to serve its yearly visitors.
