Sonoma

On a summer afternoon in Healdsburg the thermometer reads over 30 degrees; thirty kilometres west, at Jenner, where the Russian River meets the Pacific, you are glad of a jumper. That gradient is Sonoma. The county west of Napa has about 24,000 hectares of vines, roughly a tenth of California’s wine-grape area and over a quarter more than its famous neighbour. The engine is the cold Pacific: fog pours through the Petaluma Gap, a break in the coastal hills, and up the Russian River valley most evenings, retreating towards noon. Where it reaches, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay ripen slowly; where the hills hold it back, in the Alexander and Dry Creek valleys to the north, Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel get their warmth.

Nineteen names for one county

Nineteen AVAs map that variety. The Russian River Valley, an AVA since 1983, is the heart of cool-climate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, the two grapes that fill most of its vineyards. The Sonoma Coast and, since 2022, the West Sonoma Coast cover the ridges above the ocean; Los Carneros, on San Pablo Bay, is shared with Napa. Dry Creek Valley is Zinfandel country, with gnarled head-trained vines, some of which survived Prohibition. Alexander Valley, one of the warmest, grows Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot along the river.

Grape	Sweetness	Acidity	Tannin	Body
Pinot Noir	dry	medium(+) to high	low to medium	light to medium
Zinfandel	dry, also sweet	medium(−) to medium	medium(−) to medium	medium to full
Cabernet Sauvignon	dry	medium to high	medium(+) to high	medium to full
Merlot	dry	medium(−) to medium	medium(−) to medium(+)	medium to full
Chardonnay	dry	medium to high	white, no tannin–	medium(−) to full
Sauvignon Blanc	dry	medium(+) to high	white, no tannin–	medium(−) to medium

Each grape’s typical range worldwide, not in this region alone, on the WSET tasting grid (Level 3, 2022): dry to luscious, low to high, light to full. The dot before each name shows the colour of a typical bottle. Outlined: a sweet style beside the dry wines.

Russians, friars and a Hungarian

The vine arrived from two directions. The Russians of Fort Ross, founded in 1812, had vines bearing fruit by 1823 and gave the river its name; the same year the Franciscans founded the Sonoma mission, the last in California, which kept a vineyard of its own. The decisive figure was Agoston Haraszthy, a Hungarian, who founded Buena Vista in 1857, one of the oldest wineries in California, and in 1861 toured France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Hungary for the state, returning with more than 100,000 cuttings; many call him the father of Californian viticulture. At Asti in the north, the Italian Swiss Colony of 1881 owed its name to a handful of Ticinese among its early workers and became one of California’s largest producers before Prohibition, which left fewer than fifty of the county’s 256 wineries standing.

24,000 ha Sonoma has about 1.7× as many vines as all of Switzerland.

One square is all of Switzerland: about 14,350 hectares of vines.

1. Sonoma24,000 ha
2. Washington State24,000 ha
3. Napa Valley18,000–19,000 ha
4. Oregon18,000 ha

Vineyard area in hectares, rounded, as the articles give it. Regions without a reliable figure are left out.

Fire and the long game

The recent past is dated by fire: the Tubbs Fire of October 2017, which killed 22 people, the Kincade Fire of October 2019, the Glass Fire of September 2020 that crossed over from Napa. In 2014 the growers’ association set out to have every vineyard in the county certified sustainable by an independent auditor; today it reports 99 per cent of the area certified.

The fog in the glass

Sonoma Pinot Noir is riper than Burgundy but fresher than most Californian reds: cherry, raspberry and a savoury edge, best at 15 to 16 degrees with duck, salmon or mushroom risotto. Dry Creek Zinfandel, brambly and peppery, wants grilled meat or a spicy stew; Alexander Valley Cabernet is softer than Napa’s. A Swiss reader who knows the Pinot Noir of the Bündner Herrschaft should try the fog-cooled wines first.