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At the north of the San Francisco Bay Area, Sonoma County is one of the most recognizable wine countries in the New World. Yet it is difficult to pin down an identity for Sonoma wine. Is it the lean and pristine Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of the Sonoma Coast, grown within a stone’s throw of the Pacific Ocean? Or is it their satisfying and singular counterparts found in the Russian River Valley? Or perhaps Sonoma should best be known for its treasured centenarian Zinfandel vineyards, found in patches across the county, or for its structured, savory Cabernet Sauvignon and velvety Merlot.
Of course, Sonoma is all these things and more, and its diversity continues growing as young producers experiment with new varieties and expand the region’s stylistic spectrum. Still, Sonoma can be confusing. The county’s 18 American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) intersect to create a labyrinthine system that is rarely intuitive. Sonoma’s top grape varieties yield wildly divergent results in the hands of winemakers across its 1,800-square-mile expanse. In many regards, Sonoma fits inside one county the entire breadth of the California wine industry.
This guide will explore Sonoma County as well as the other counties of the North Coast: Mendocino County, Lake County, and Solano County. (Napa County is addressed in a separate expert guide.) Despite their proximity, these counties likewise vary in climate and terroir, and their exciting potential is only just being realized.
It is believed that Sonoma County has been inhabited for at least 10,000 years. Three primary Native American tribes were present in the area prior to European arrival: the Coast Miwok, the Wappo, and the Kashaya Pomo. The Miwok settled near Bodega Bay, and their first documented encounter with Europeans comes from 1579, noted by Chaplain Fletcher, who was aboard a ship of Sir Francis Drake. The Pomo were just north, near what become Fort Ross, while the Wappo lived to the interior, also occupying the Napa Valley. Before European settlement, an estimated 5,000 Native Americans populated Sonoma. When the Europeans arrived, Mexican land grant holders forced many of them into work as laborers. While Native American populations are still found in Sonoma, their numbers have steeply declined.
The Russians beat the Spanish and Mexicans to Sonoma County, landing at Bodega Bay and constructing Fort Ross in 1812. This became the most southern outpost of the Russian-American Fur Company, an operation that descended down the West Coast from its headquarters in Alaska and made use of Native Alaskans and the Indigenous peoples of Sonoma as sources of labor. Beyond fur trapping, the Russians are also credited with planting the first grapevines in Sonoma County. Their initial efforts at Fort Ross, unsurprisingly, failed—and it would be another century and a half before coastal viticulture took hold in Sonoma. The Russians found greater success further inland, and in 1836, Igor Chernykh planted the first vineyard in what is today the Russian River Valley. The Russians’ stay in Sonoma, however, was short lived; they sold Fort Ross in 1841 and retreated to Alaska.
In 1823, Father José Altimira and his Franciscan brothers established the Mission San Francisco de Solano at the center of what would become downtown Sonoma. San Francisco Solano was the last of the 21 missions built along the California Coast, an endeavor that began in San Diego in 1769. It was also the only mission built after Mexico gained independence from Spain. Viticulture was important to the Franciscans—who, further south, introduced vinifera to California. They primarily cultivated Mission, also known as Criolla Chica or País in South America and Listán Prieto on the Canary Islands, which they vinified into a sweet fortified wine called Angelica. A vineyard was planted at San Francisco Solano, though winegrowing there is less documented than at the other missions.
In 1835, at the order of Governor José Figueroa, General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, who would later become a prolific grapegrower, arrived in Sonoma to secularize the San Francisco Solano mission and organize a town in its immediate surroundings. Several of Sonoma’s early winegrowing efforts were tied to land grants deeded to American pioneers by the Mexican government. One such example was Rancho Sotoyome, awarded to Cyrus Alexander—the first to plant grapes in his namesake Alexander Valley. Mexican governance of California, however, was brief. Despite being outnumbered roughly 20 to 1, the American settlers (there were only around 500 in California) organized in the late spring of 1846 to gain control of the territory. On June 14, a small group, led by William B. Ide, arrested Vallejo at his Sonoma home and declared the independent Bear Flag Republic, using as its symbol a white flag decorated with a star and a grizzly bear—not unlike California’s state flag today. American military forces, under Commodore John D. Sloat, seized control of the situation by July 9, claiming California for the United States. In 1850, California was the 31st state admitted to the Union.
The 1849 Gold Rush moved a large American population west, with an estimated over 300,000 hopefuls traveling to the Sierras with the dream of getting rich quick in California. Several immigrant communities—French, English, Scottish, German, and Danish—reached the West Coast, and after trying their hands at panning for gold, many came to Sonoma, in some cases bringing their wine traditions from the Old World. Among them was the Hungarian-born serial entrepreneur Agoston Haraszthy. In 1949, he traveled with his family from Wisconsin to California. Instead of searching for gold, however, he looked south to San Diego, where he became the first county sheriff and built the area’s first prison. He also planted grapevines, a lifelong interest he had pursued in the Midwest.
In 1855, Haraszthy first laid eyes on the Buena Vista property in the Sonoma Valley, just east of the town of Sonoma. He bought 560 acres in 1857, and in the following year, he acquired an additional 4,000 neighboring acres. Only 12 acres of vineyard were planted at what may have already been known as Buena Vista at the time of Haraszthy’s purchase. While the state wine industry was still largely concentrated to the south, Haraszthy’s plantings made Buena Vista the second largest vineyard in California by the end of 1858. Further, California in this era was still planted mostly to Mission, a high-cropping grape with little character when made into a dry wine. To improve quality, Haraszthy brought back 100,000 vine cuttings from a trip to Europe in 1862. Among them were hundreds of grape varieties believed to be new to California—including Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc. While most of his trial plantings failed, Haraszthy’s early efforts were unmatched in diversifying the California wine industry. Haraszthy disappeared mysteriously in 1869, and legend suggests he was eaten by alligators, as he was last known to have visited an alligator-infested river. Buena Vista remains California’s oldest winery in operation, today owned by Jean-Charles Boisset.
Buena Vista spurred exponential growth in the Sonoma wine industry and was quickly joined in 1858 by the nearby Gundlach-Bundschu, which remains in family hands. In 1862, Isaac De Turk established his Belle Mount winery in the Bennett Valley, and in 1869, Georges Bloch brought Zinfandel home to the Dry Creek Valley. While poorly documented, Chinese labor was essential to California vineyards and cellars at the time, until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 halted Chinese immigration to the United States. Haraszthy hired Chinese workers at Buena Vista, despite racist criticisms he faced at the time for providing them with employment.
Later immigrant waves in the 1880s brought large Italian populations, whose culture deeply impacted the blossoming Sonoma wine industry. Several Italian families, arriving during the second half of the 19th century, remain important to Sonoma wine, including the Martinelli, Rafanelli, Pedroncelli, and Foppiano families. The Italian Swiss Colony, founded in 1881 at Sonoma’s far north in the Piedmont-inspired town of Asti, would later become the world’s largest winery. By 1910, it grew to an annual capacity of more than 14 million gallons, with more than three million dollars of stock.
Phylloxera was first identified in California in 1873 at Buena Vista, igniting a widespread viticultural crisis that required most of the state to be replanted on the resistant Saint George rootstock. By 1880, over 600 Sonoma vineyard acres had succumbed to phylloxera. New vineyards were planted, many of them to Zinfandel and heritage field blends, and several of these remain in production today.
More detrimental to the Sonoma wine industry was Prohibition. A decades-long temperance movement in the United States led to the ratification of the 18th Amendment in 1919, which would take effect the following year, banning the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors.” Surprisingly, Prohibition had some benefits for wine. A loophole in the Volstead Act, the law enforcing Prohibition, allowed each household to ferment 200 gallons of wine at home each year. California vineyard acreage nearly doubled between 1920 and 1927, from 300,000 to 577,000 acres. The price of California wine grapes also rose—from between $9.50 to $30 per ton in the 1910s to as high as $375 by 1924. Still, Prohibition brought unprecedented challenges to Sonoma’s wine economy. Some wineries held on by transitioning to cooking or sacramental wines (both also legal exceptions), while others relied on grape sales for home fermentation across the country. Others still ripped out their vines in favor of crops such as apples and prunes, or for grazing pastures for livestock. At the onset of Prohibition, there were 256 wineries in Sonoma County; upon its 1933 repeal, less than 50 remained.
The passage of the 21st Amendment brought an end to Prohibition in 1933. World War II blockaded the easy importation of European wines, providing relief to the struggling American wine industry. Winegrowing in Sonoma, however, was slow to recover. Among the early varieties to break through in the post-Prohibition era were Pinot Noir and Chardonnay—today the county’s two most planted grapes. At Hanzell on Moon Mountain, Ambassador James Zellerbach developed his Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vines in the early 1950s. Hanzell’s Ambassador’s Block, dating to 1953, remains the oldest continually producing vineyard in North America for both varieties. Pinot Noir spread north to the Russian River Valley in the 1960s and ’70s through the work of such figures as Joseph Swan and Joe Rochioli Jr.
In 1976, British wine merchant Steven Spurrier organized the Judgement of Paris in France, pitting the best California Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay wines against classics from Bordeaux and Burgundy. The event effectively put California (and the New World) on the global wine map when Napa’s Stag’s Leap Cellars and Chateau Montelena trounced the French in the red and white competitions. While described more often as a triumph for the Napa Valley, Montelena’s winning 1973 Chardonnay was, in fact, composed of nearly three-quarters Sonoma fruit.
Around this time, winegrowers returned to the western reaches of the Sonoma Coast, an area believed impossible for viticulture since the 19th-century failures there. Instead, however, the far Sonoma Coast became, and for many continues to be, the county’s next great frontier, especially in its suitability to Burgundian varieties. Michael Bohan was first, in 1972 near Fort Ross, but his initial efforts went toward Zinfandel before he followed up with cooler-climate grapes. Daniel Schoenfeld established Wild Hog Vineyards in 1977, and in 1980, David Hirsch planted his family estate, also in what is today Fort Ross-Seaview AVA. Though David would eventually create his own label, the Hirsch Vineyard achieved early acclaim through venerated buyers—including Littorai, Williams Selyem, and Kistler—that bottled vineyard-designate wines from the site.
The northeastern corridor of Sonoma also witnessed increased activity in these years. In 1972, David Stare founded Dry Creek Vineyard, championing Sauvignon Blanc in the region. Next door in the Alexander Valley, Robert Young, Rodney Strong, and Tom Jordan advocated for premium Cabernet Sauvignon in the 1960s and ’70s. Beringer, and later Peter Michael, felt similarly about Cabernet’s potential in Knights Valley. In 1981, Sonoma’s first AVA was awarded to Sonoma Valley, with several others following in 1983.
The turn of the millennium marked a stylistic shift in California wine. Critic Robert Parker rose to prominence in the 1980s through his publication The Wine Advocate, where he popularized the 100-point evaluation system and amassed a global consumer following. Many chased a style they believed appealed to Parker’s palate—ripe, extracted, and “hedonistic”—to achieve high scores. Widely associated with Bordeaux, the so-called Parkerization phenomenon is most associated with Bordeaux varieties, but it impacted wines made from Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and effectively every other grape. Helen Turley’s Marcassin brand and its rich Pinot Noir and Chardonnay wines, for example, achieved cult status not dissimilar to that of many Cabernet projects in the Napa Valley.
For white wine, Kendall Jackson (along with Rombauer in Napa) reimagined Chardonnay from California. Instead of leaning into the Burgundian ethos fostered by Hanzell and Joseph Swan, Jackson Family created a wholly new style for the variety. Its Kendall-Jackson Vintner’s Reserve, first debuted in the 1980s, was bottled off-dry, finished with unfermented Gewürztraminer must. The Gewürztraminer’s aromatic lift complemented the buttery decadence of the wine. Its massive success redefined the global perception of California Chardonnay, and Jackson Family quickly became one of the most important forces in Sonoma wine. Some California Chardonnay producers still lament the difficulty of shaking that stereotype when trying to convert members of the Anything But Chardonnay (or ABC) crowd, which rejected the Kendall-Jackson style and erroneously came to equate all Chardonnay, especially California Chardonnay, with this profile.
In 2011, Jasmine Hirsch of her family’s eponymous estate in Fort Ross-Seaview and sommelier and Santa Barbara winemaker Rajat Parr launched the influential organization In Pursuit of Balance (IPOB). Widely perceived as a reaction to the decadent winemaking of the Parker era, the project began focused on Pinot Noir and later grew to include Chardonnay. With an eye toward Burgundy, IPOB aimed to foster a dialogue around ripeness and what some saw as heavy-handed winemaking in California viniculture. The membership group included some of Sonoma’s most heralded brands, such as Hanzell, Littorai, Failla, Cobb, Ceritas, Red Car, and, of course, Hirsch. Its assertions drew controversy, with detractors criticizing the organization for oversimplifying the concept of balance and suggesting that the wines of some of IPOB’s members weren’t restrained or balanced either—that they were instead under-ripe. Others perceived the organization as snobbish for discrediting styles of wine that are widely beloved by consumers.
IPOB dissolved in 2016, but the organization’s legacy can still be felt. Even beyond the group’s members, a new generation of exciting projects has expanded the conversation of “balance” far beyond Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, championing Sonoma’s old vines and heritage winemaking styles and also turning to more esoteric grapes. Like all parts of the wine world, Sonoma also has producers that identify as natural winemakers, favoring low intervention and immediate drinkability. Sonoma’s old guard, too, remains strong. Recently, several of the county’s most decorated wineries have changed hands throughout high-profile acquisitions, including Merry Edwards to Maisons Marques & Domaines, Williams Selyem to Burgundy’s Domaine Faiveley, and Kosta Browne to Duckhorn.
Today, Sonoma faces new and unprecedented challenges. The 2012 vintage commenced a succession of drought years that forced winegrowers to rethink many irrigation practices. Since 2017, wildfires have been an annual reality for California wine country. The 2017 fires were particularly destructive for Sonoma, ravaging the city of Santa Rosa and displacing many in the wine community whose homes were lost. In 2020, fires came alarmingly early. The LNU Lightning Complex decimated much of the Sonoma crop, beginning in August and affecting grapes with smoke taint weeks before harvest. How Sonoma winegrowers chooses to address viticulture in a changing climate will greatly define this next chapter in the region’s wine history.