Rating: 
Summary: amusing look behind the scenes
Review: Janet Maslin's review in the New York Times called this book enjoyably wry and amusing and compared it to a young Tom Wolfe, and she's got a point. The book is light and entertaining, a compelling fast read filled with colorful characters. There's the man who spends $500,000 on a single bottle of wine, and the vintner with a barnful of vintage Porsches, Ferraris, and Bentleys on his Napa "farm," and the community activists who fight so that dozens of chickens can wander freely through the town square in Sonoma. The book gives an eye-opening insider's look at the wine country and shows what visitors rarely see when they come for a day of wine tasting or a weekend getaway at an inn or resort. The tone is humorous and bemused but the book also raises real issues about growth and development and direct democracy and how can we try to preserve the natural beauty and character of a place as more people flock to live there and threaten to ruin it.
Rating:
Summary: Full bodied with a smooth finish
Review: No one writes these gossipy business stories better than Alan Deutschman. Wine seems like a thing for snobby folks to use to one-up each other, but it's really a very vital business. I think he was looking for some R&R after slaving away uncovering the story of PR-shy Steve Jobs and so he went to where the hype is and found himself drinking it all in. Wine is an important and healthy part of our cultural tradition says one of the wine makers. I think this is both self-serving and true. The book shows us why.Deutschman has a fine ear for a good story and the anecdotes he found are the strength of the book. This kind of well-documented and reported writing leavened with the right amount of gossip and dish should be a stronger part of our cultural tradition.
Rating:
Summary: Great read! With only one questionable item........
Review: The book is GREAT! I have visited Napa and Sonoma frequently since 1968 and Alan tells this absorbing story in a facinating and entertaining way. Only problem I have personally is his assessment of "Baron" Hazrathy. WHO convicted him of embezzelment? He was vindicated and his cost of the trip to Eurpoe to bring back great vines was NEVER reimbursed as promised by the CA legislature....which seems to indicate this austere body was as duplicitous then as they are now!
Rating:
Summary: Great read! With only one questionable item........
Review: The book is GREAT! I have visited Napa and Sonoma frequently since 1968 and Alan tells this absorbing story in a facinating and entertaining way. Only problem I have personally is his assessment of "Baron" Hazrathy. WHO convicted him of embezzelment? He was vindicated and his cost of the trip to Eurpoe to bring back great vines was NEVER reimbursed as promised by the CA legislature....which seems to indicate this austere body was as duplicitous then as they are now!
Rating: 
Summary: Dominick way over-Dunne
Review: There is a place for light and gossipy books, especially if they are well written and entertaining. This one is neither well written or entertaining. For a non-fiction book, the author's depth of inquiry, presentation, and the conclusions he draws, are inexecusably shallow. Given the rich bounty of events, people, and relationships with which he had to work, there was clearly a far more fertile and substantive harvest left on the vines than what was ultimately brought to market. And that is truly unfortunate. For a better written non-fiction book on Napa/Sonoma, I would recommend James Conaway's Napa: The Story of an American Eden.
Rating:
Summary: juicy grapes and juicier gossip
Review: This book is so awesome! I'm not normally drawn to non-fiction titles, and I was worried that a book about wine would be stuffy. But it's so not! Reading A TALE OF TWO VALLEYS is like watching a juicy episode of your favorite reality TV show, only better, because with this classy book in hand there's no need to be embarrassed. AND this book even gave me the courage to drink my tacky white zinfandel with pride. All wine is good wine, and this book is a delightfully fruity swallow!
Rating:
Summary: A non-fiction book that reads like a delicious novel...
Review: What a delicious read! I meant to save this book for my next plane ride, but once I picked it up I couldn't put it down. It may be non-fiction, but it reads like a page-turning novel. Here's my prediction: This book will do for Napa/Sonoma what "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" did for Savannah, "Under the Tuscan Sun" did for Tuscany and "A Year in Provence" did for southern France. By the way, I'm not the only one who enjoyed this book. The New York Times review compared the writer to a young Tom Wolfe. Wow.
Rating:
Summary: Reportorial carelessness
Review: What do a breezy writing style, an eye for quirky detail, and reportorial carelessness add up to? In the case of Alan Deutschman, it's this slender book--an often entertaining but appallingly unreliable take on contemporary lifestyles in the wine country north of San Francisco. If you catch a reporter in one god-awful factual lapse, it does make you suspicious of everything else he says, doesn't it? Page 50, where Deutschman casually "disses" two of the Sonoma Valley's historical heroes, was where I "caught" this errant reporter. Mariano G. Vallejo was no "robber baron," but the founder of Sonoma and for many years its highly respected patriarch. He was also an important winemaker. And Agoston (not "Auguston") Haraszthy was neither a sham aristocrat nor a "rogue," but a genuine Hungarian nobleman-turned-pioneer viticulturist whose herculean labors in the 1850's and 1860's did much to put California on the wine map of the world. Haraszthy was sometimes called "Count," never "Baron." For more than a century, he was universally revered as the "Father of California Viticulture," though some scholars now argue that the title exaggerates his importance. In any case, he was fully exonerated by judge and jury of the spurious charges of embezzling gold from the San Francisco mint that Deutschman now lays at his door. These facts are not hidden or secret. If Deutschman had cracked my own book, Strong Wine: The Life and Legend of Agoston Haraszthy (Stanford University Press, 1998), he would have learned enough about both Vallejo and Haraszthy to get his facts straight.
Rating:
Summary: Reportorial carelessness
Review: What do a breezy writing style, an eye for quirky detail, and reportorial carelessness add up to? In the case of Alan Deutschman, it's this slender book--an often entertaining but appallingly unreliable take on contemporary lifestyles in the wine country north of San Francisco. If you catch a reporter in one god-awful factual lapse, it does make you suspicious of everything else he says, doesn't it? Page 50, where Deutschman casually "disses" two of the Sonoma Valley's historical heroes, was where I "caught" this errant reporter. Mariano G. Vallejo was no "robber baron," but the founder of Sonoma and for many years its highly respected patriarch. He was also an important winemaker. And Agoston (not "Auguston") Haraszthy was neither a sham aristocrat nor a "rogue," but a genuine Hungarian nobleman-turned-pioneer viticulturist whose herculean labors in the 1850's and 1860's did much to put California on the wine map of the world. Haraszthy was sometimes called "Count," never "Baron." For more than a century, he was universally revered as the "Father of California Viticulture," though some scholars now argue that the title exaggerates his importance. In any case, he was fully exonerated by judge and jury of the spurious charges of embezzling gold from the San Francisco mint that Deutschman now lays at his door. These facts are not hidden or secret. If Deutschman had cracked my own book, Strong Wine: The Life and Legend of Agoston Haraszthy (Stanford University Press, 1998), he would have learned enough about both Vallejo and Haraszthy to get his facts straight.
Rating:
Summary: Pretentious posturing
Review: Yes, there is no doubt that "Two Valleys" is an outsider's view of life in Sonoma Valley (he barely speaks of Napa). But Deutschman's attempts to amuse and entertain at the expense of his hardworking "new friends" merely demonstrates what is obviously his own overblown sense of self. The tone of this book is not at all inclusive of a joke, but rather exclusive to every character in it, with the exception of those Silicon Valley individuals with power. Clearly Deutschman knows enough not to bite the hand that feeds him. It's a pretentious book and not at all worth the read.
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