Sonoma County is a very important California wine-producing county situated north of San Francisco and west of the napa valley. Although the neighboring Napa Valley has dominated the region in terms of recognition and attracting many major wineries, Sonoma has made tremendous progress since the early 1970s and has now carved out significant recognition in its own right. Sonoma's winemaking history goes back to the 1820s, when the Sonoma Mission's vineyards were planted by Franciscan monks. Unfortunately, they planted mission grapes, which don't produce high-quality table wines. In the 1850s and 1860s, agoston haraszthy (who established the original Buena Vista Winery in 1857) expanded the effort by trying to determine which varieties did best in various California areas. To this end, he imported thousands of cuttings of about 300 different grape varieties. He planted many of these in sonoma county and sold the rest to others around the state. Like much of California, the influx of phylloxera in the 1890s and prohibition from 1920 to 1933 severely curtailed the growth of Sonoma County's wine business. It wasn't until the Napa Valley boom started in the mid- to late-1960s that Sonoma County was reenergized as a top winemaking region. It began converting from grapes that had been used primarily for jug wines-like alicante bouschet, carignane and petite sirah-and now leads Napa County in acreage for chardonnay pinot noir and zinfandel. Sonoma has built a solid reputation for wines made from cabernet sauvignon Chardonnay, gewürztraminer Pinot Noir, sauvignon blanc and Zinfandel. In 2000, there were over 55,000 planted acres, almost 65 percent to red varieties. Cabernet Sauvignon is the most widely planted red followed by Pinot Noir, Merlot, and Zinfandel. Chardonnay makes up over 80 percent of the white variety acreage. Sonoma County is quite large and has diverse climate areas ranging from Region I to Region III (see climate regions of california). Numerous AVAs have been established here since 1978, some sharing the same geographic area. In addition to belonging to the huge north coast ava and having its own appellation Sonoma County contains the following AVAs: alexander valley, carneros, chalk hill, dry creek, knights valley Northern Sonoma, russian river valley, sonoma coast, sonoma county green valley, sonoma mountain and sonoma valley. A number of wineries are permitted to use any of five or six different AVA designations for the same wine. The Northern Sonoma AVA begins around the city of Sebastopol in the south and goes up to the Mendocino County line in the north and covers the smaller viticultural areas of Alexander Valley, Chalk Hill, Dry Creek, Green Valley-Sonoma, Knight's Valley, and Russian River Valley. Sonoma County has over 175 wineries, which ranks it second only to Napa County in the United States for number of wineries.
