In Sonoma County, wine goes back to a Russian settlement on the coast in the early 1800s. A few years later the northernmost California mission came to the town of Sonoma with the mission grapes coming along. The first commercial winery started in the mid 1800s.
Wineries and the grape growers are worried. Yes, many small businesses have things to worry about. Grape growers are farmers so are always worried and the weather, government policies, and almost everything else.
May is the month this happens in the Northern Hemisphere.
You mean this isn't what you're looking for when you clicked on the title?
Actually, a few varieties of grape vines do have male and female vines. The main one is Vitis rotundifolia, or muscadine, that grows in the southern U.S.
Commercial vineyards may still need bees for pollinating their cover crops.
Self-pollination does allow reliable and timely pollination, and it helps maintain the best traits. It does not promote diversity or help in adapting to a changing climate.
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| Hey, it's not polite to peek while they pollinate |
The key factors in growing premium wine grapes are the microclimate and the soil. They impact the ripening and flavors, and define the characteristics of a wine. The microclimates and soils in Sonoma County are different from those in Napa, even though the two counties are side-by-side. Winemaking is also key to the properties of the finished wine, but we can assume equipment and practices are similar.
So it's the microclimates and soils that make the wines different. Let's take a deeper dive into why the grapes coming into the winery can be different in these two neighbors.
Below are a few suggestions for smaller, maybe somewhat hard to find wine tastings in Sonoma County. For every Chateau St Jean or Kendall Jackson, there are dozens of little charmers like these.
Below is a map of the US with the number of wineries per state. There are some surprises.
Polling and surveying company, YouGov, released data on American's wine habits. Following are a few highlights, some surprising.
How could Los Angeles have any influence on the wine industry? Well, it turns out that the start of California's commercial wine business was in LA.
The California missions run from San Diego's Mission, founded in 1769, to Sonoma's Mission in 1823. BTW, there were also missions throughout Baja California. The missions were known for planting wine grapes and making mission wine for church services and to serve at their own dinners.
You might consider the San Diego Mission as the oldest winery in the country. However, they haven't made wine there in a very long time, it was never really a commercial winery, and California wasn't part of the US at the time.
I'm old enough to remember when the tasting room was a plank across a couple of barrels in a corner of the actual winery. You walked in, got a small, cheap excuse for a wine glass, the tasting list was on a chalkboard on the wall, and you tasted while standing at the bar. You either purchased or you didn't, but you went on your merry way after a half hour, no charge. The purpose, like the tasting room, was simple, to introduce you to their wines and hope to make you a customer.
Things have changed. It's not everywhere, but the Disneyland style is spreading.
What are the likely effects of the American tariffs and retaliatory tariffs on the American wine industry? This is educated guesswork, but we'll know for sure if the tariffs are still in place in a few months.
Why should you care? Besides price increases, there are well over a million jobs at stake.
So you're not much of a wino, or someone in your group travelling to Sonoma County couldn't care less. What to do?
The biggest difference in wine quality relating to price is in the ten and twenty dollar bottles. Premium wines start in the $20 or $30 range. Upward from there, you will usually find increasing quality, but with diminishing returns. So what are the major distinctions between the cheap and the fancy stuff?
