Sonoma Coast

The vineyards along the Sonoma County coast have been grouped together as the county’s largest wine region. The American Viticultural Area (AVA) was officially designated on July 13, 1987. It comprises over 480,000 acres with roughly 7,000 acres under vine. The Sonoma Coast region was created as an umbrella AVA to contain cold-climate producers that were scattered throughout the cooler zones along the Sonoma coast.

The appellation extends from as far south as San Pablo Bay north to the Mendocino County line. Its expansive boundaries overlap a number of other Sonoma County AVA’s and sub-regions. They also include some Sonoma shoreline vineyards, previously outside any other viticultural area. The disparate nature of the appellation leads one to believe that the region will eventually be divided into several sub-AVA’s such as Fort Ross-Seaview.

At present the area is the least planted in Sonoma County. But that is rapidly changing as popularity of the appellation’s primary grape, Pinot Noir, continues to generate consumer excitement and celebrity winemakers make their mark with Sonoma Coast wines. The regions other important grapes are Syrah and Chardonnay. These differ greatly from the jammy Syrah’s of warmer climates. Overall the wines are more elegant and complex. They express an intensity typified by notes of smoked meat, tempered by violets, white pepper, aromatic spices, with a touch of earthiness thrown in.

The extreme climate of the area poses both opportunities and challenges for the winemaker. These factors contribute to slow grape maturation, with optimum ripeness coinciding with the very end of the growing season -- ideal conditions for super-premium Pinot Noir. Alas the cool climate also provides producers and winemakers with a “white knuckle” experience, as they anxiously anticipate a brilliant harvest or a crop ruined by the arrival of the winter rains. Fruit damaged by mold is a constant threat in this marginal climate, but to those who succeed the rewards are many.

History

The history of the Sonoma Coast appellation is short and goes back no further than the 1970’s. Unlike Los Carneros or The Russian River, grape growing is a recent phenomenon in this region. The first European settlers to this region were the Russians of Fort Ross, but they brought little agriculture to the area. Their concern was for trapping and there is no evidence of cultivation of grapes. Because of the cold and wet climate the farmers that later settled in the area never considered viticulture as suitable to the region.

This changed as the reputation of the Russian River Valley appellation exploded driving producers and winemakers to look farther west for areas that might prove to be compatible with the production of high end Pinot Noir.

Soil and Climate

The marine influence defines this sweeping appellation. The cool climate and relatively high rainfall are the general ecological features shared by all vineyards within the Sonoma Coast AVA. There appears to be little else to connect this far-flung appellation. It certainly is not the soil. The distances are too great to find a correlation common to soil type across the varied geography of the Sonoma Coast.

Learn about the Russian River Valley and Los Carneros appellations.