The novel coronavirus did more than kill a third of a million Americans and freeze major swaths of the business and education worlds. By turning large gatherings into potentially virulent spreaders of disease, it also turned 2020 into the year the fun died â in the Napa Valley as across the nation and globe.
The Napa Valley Expo stood empty in late May, when tens of thousands of music fans had been expected to pack the fairground for the BottleRock festival. Not a note was played of a concert series planned for the Oxbow Commons, the summertime Porchfest music crawl was replaced by internet video feeds from bedrooms, and all that survived of the Town & Country Fair in August was an online livestock auction with cattle and goats dropped off by truck a few days later.