The country road unfurls through a misty landscape of giant trees and meadows dotted with grazing deer. Vines appear to one side, and then a weathered old barn in a grove of redwoods.
A glimpse of stacked wooden barrels through the open barn doors tells you the place is a winery, and a small sign invites you to come in and taste. Accept the invitation and you may well encounter world-class wines, especially Chardonnay and Pinot Noir.
The scene is typical of Sonoma County's wine country. There are lots of enticing back roads with tasting adventures just around the next bend. I've described Westside Road in the Russian River Valley, but there are many similar scenes in Alexander Valley, Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma Valley and half a dozen or so other wine enclaves within the Sonoma County lines. I think of them fondly when I'm stuck in Napa Valley traffic, bathed in the fumes of a tour bus waiting to turn into a winery-cum-theme park.
Napa County is gorgeous too, of course. But its self-consciously glamorous sensibility, evoking Bordeaux, is quite different from Sonoma County's earthier, more Burgundian farm-country feel.
Next-door neighbors across a craggy fence called the Mayacamas Range, Napa and Sonoma have evolved quite differently in the past few decades. Like its French model, Napa is virtually a wine monoculture: Less than half the size of Sonoma, it has nearly as many acres of wine grapes and almost twice as many wineries. And like Bordeaux, Napa Valley is a magnet for wealthy seekers of a stylized wine country lifestyle. Its chateau-like wineries concentrate mostly on Bordeaux-style wines made primarily from Bordeaux grapes such as Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.
By contrast, Sonoma County is a much larger, more diverse region with a decidedly agricultural ambience. Glamorous wineries are few and far between; many facilities are housed in old barns or their modern equivalents. Growers get good prices for their fruit, especially Pinot Noir and old-vine Zinfandel, but nothing near the $20,000 a ton that was the top reported price for Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon in 2004.
And while Sonoma's top Pinot producers routinely get $60 a bottle or more, there's nothing on the west side of the Mayacamas to match Napa's $200-a-bottle "cult" Cabernets.
Yet Sonoma's diverse terrains and climates offer excellent places to grow just about any wine grape, and the range and consistent high quality of Sonoma County wines reflect that.
