A First For Napa: The Napa Valley Car Club

By Larry Printz |. THE NAPA EVENT

The Napa Valley Car Club did not come into this world quietly. It was conjured by a band of those who love cars the way the devout love hymns — who know the sight of a Ferrari in the late-afternoon sun can make a man believe in a higher power all over again. These are not mere enthusiasts. These are celebrants of velocity, worshippers at the altar of horsepower, and connoisseurs of every other good thing that makes life worth living: food that sings on the tongue, wine that can make you weep, art that sharpens the eye, fashion that whispers sophistication, and, of course, a twisting road that grins back at you when you lean into it.

Photo courtesy of The Napa Event

Car clubs, as you may know them, tend to be sad little cabals of grease-stained garages, folding chairs, and lukewarm coffee. The Napa Valley Car Club is none of that. From its conception, it is a different animal. Andrew Mazotti, a man with entrepreneurial fire in his belly and the key fob to a Porsche in his pocket, looks around and wonders how he might multiply the joy of ownership. Instead of settling for one machine, he recruits four equally successful compatriots and builds an exotic-car rental company right here in wine country. Why not add a Ferrari to the bouquet of Cabernet? Why not let a Lamborghini serve as the chariot to your vineyard tour?

None of them had done it before. None of them needed to. Each brought a gift: one with grit under his fingernails, another fluent in hospitality, the rest offering their own peculiar alchemy. Soon, what began as an exotic car rental becomes something else entirely—an experience, a lifestyle, a communion of machine and man. Goldman Sachs and Coca-Cola came calling, hungry for the club’s curated spectacles of chrome and thunder. Resorts sign on, events blossom, and The Napa Valley Car Club grows until expansion is an inevitability.

Enter Scott and Tara Shrader, visionaries of The Palm Event in Florida, where cars consort with fine food, fashion, and art in a delirious celebration of pleasure in Palm Beach. The Shraders meet the Napa crew, sparks fly, and before long The Napa Event is born in 2024. It’s a celebration of all the sweet, sybaritic spectacles that make existence worthwhile – just like its older east coast cousin.

But the club itself demands a temple. And so, on the banks of the Napa River, the club builds one. A clubhouse, not a garage, with 5,000 square feet of open-air patio humming with conversation, clinking glasses, and the silhouettes of supercars gleaming like icons in the background. Other car clubs hide themselves away in industrial parks, cold and lifeless, temples to storage. The Napa Valley Car Club opens its doors to light, to laughter, to people who come not just for the cars, but for the company.

And that’s the secret: the cars are the scenery, but the play is human connection. Men and women join who can’t tell a camshaft from a crankshaft, but they love the theater of it, the rhythm of being there, the cool cosmopolitan hum of a place that feels both exclusive and welcoming.

Napa has long been a bastion of sophistication, sometimes too refined, too buttoned-up and too stiff with its own importance. The Napa Valley Car Club brings something brash and sensual, something that breathes. It’s sexy, it’s hot, and above all, it’s fun. It proves that even in the certainty of Napa, tradition can make room for a little horsepower and a lot of joy.