Welcome to Planet of the Grapes

As it happens only six percent of Sonoma County is planted in vineyards. Next door, Napa County is nine percent for a total area of 45,000 acres--or about 70 square miles. Sonoma County is much larger in area than Napa, even bigger than the state of Rhode Island, and has 60,000 acres planted to wine grapes.

Driving through, or flying over, certain parts of the county will lead you to believe there are vineyards everywhere.

Okay, so Sonoma County has 60,000 acres of wine grapes. What's that mean? It varies widely, but we'll say there are 1,000 vines per acre so that's 60 million vines. On average you get 4,000 bottles per acre (from sonomacounty.com fact sheet) so that's 240 million bottles of wine produced each year! That is roughly one bottle per adult in the U.S.

Tourism and the hospitality industry are a key part of the local economy and that is, of course, tied directly to the local wine industry. While some parts of the country look at tech stocks or maybe automobile sales as a key indicator of their local economy Sonoma looks at hotel occupancy rates. Visitors spend almost $2 billion dollars annually.

The local wine industry keeps an eye on U.S. wine sales, imports, exports, craft beer, and cocktail sales, too. Oh yeah, they watch the weather.