The Silicon Valley effect on wine

Less than 100 miles separates Napa Valley from Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, a sprawling, leafy campus that is as good a candidate as any for the symbolic heart of today’s Silicon Valley. Driving through the country lanes of California wine country, the primary sign of Silicon Valley’s influence might seem to be the large homes and even larger wineries increasingly purchased with the proceeds of dot.com successes. These, however, are merely the simplest and most visible of the myriad ways California’s wine industry has been shaped by the computing revolution of the past 40 years.

Napa, of course, isn’t...