An Introduction to the History of Wine in Sonoma County

[Originally published by the Sonoma County Wine Library in 2002. Contributed by Bo Simons, Wine Librarian]

Not Without A Sense of Humor

Sonoma County grows serious grapes and makes serious world class wine, but it does not take itself too seriously. The county has over 56,000 acres of vineyards and crushes nearly 200,000 tons of grapes. Sonoma County wines stand proudly among the best in the world, yet a spirit of playfulness exists. Pat Paulsen and the Smothers Brothers were not the only comedians among Sonoma County vintners. Joel Peterson at Ravenswood poses himself and his wine crew naked inside wine barrels to advertise his wine and his message: “No Wimpy Wines.”

Sonoma County Wine Weekend produced some outrageous auctions, including the 2008 60s takeoff and the “Take Me to Your Liter” UFO craziness of years past. Sonoma vintners boarded the Napa Valley Wine Train dressed as Wild West train robbers to pour Sonoma wines to surprised passengers. After being turned down by the BATF for a label featuring a tasteful nude reclining in a vineyard, Kenwood Vineyards submitted a label featuring the same vineyard scene with a skeleton instead. Sonoma’s rich wine heritage has seasoned it, made it comfortable enough with itself to laugh at the some of the pretensions associated with wine.

From Russia with Grapes

Sonoma stands as the one county in California where the Spanish were not the first to plant the vine and make wine. They were beaten by the Russians who started their outpost at Fort Ross in 1812 to supply food for their fur trading operations in Alaska. The Russians planted orchards and vines near Fort Ross and further south in the Coleman Valley area.

“A historical question arises here as to the first European vines planted in what we today call the North Coast winegrowing region of California. Should the Spanish at San Rafael or the Russians near Fort Ross receive the credit? It is a very close call, but it is likely that both plantations went in during the dormant season of 1817-1818.” - Historian Charles Sullivan (Napa Wine. San Francisco: Wine Appreciation Guild, 1994. Page 5.)

While it may be a dispute for the North Coast, it is clear that the Russians beat the Spanish in Sonoma County, where the mission was not built until 1823. The Russian presence in Northern California may have spurred the Spanish into action, but it was the missionary zeal of Father Jose Altimira that got the Sonoma Mission established.

This last of the Spanish Franciscan missions, Mission San Francisco de Solano, was founded in 1823, in Sonoma Valley. Father Altimira, a dedicated Franciscan, dismayed by the apathy and lack of progress at the San Francisco mission, and anxious to bring more Indians into the church, exceeded the orders of his superiors to build this last mission on the El Camino Real and the only one founded by the Mexican government rather than the Spanish.

Mexico had just shaken off Spanish rule in 1821. Altimira scouted sites from Petaluma to Napa, and picked an area near the base of the Sonoma Valley. One of the points in the Sonoma site’s favor was that it looked like a good place to grow vines. “We see good land for planting vines,” Padre Altimira noted in his journal. By 1824 the Sonoma mission was a burgeoning operation, with over 600 neophytes, several buildings and 1,000 vines in place, propagated from cuttings from Mission San Jose. But the thriving Mission was doomed. The new government in Mexico was strongly anti-clerical, and in August 1833, it ordered the Missions secularized. In 1834, Mexican California Governor Jose Figueroa started the process of parceling out the mission lands.

The Sonoma mission had legal rights to over 700 square miles of land. Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo got control of much of that land. Vallejo was born and raised in Mexican California, and he considered himself a Californio, rather than a Spaniard or Mexican. This outlook helps explain why he so readily adapted and flourished as California changed from a Mexican province to an American state. Vallejo took over the Mission vineyard, and replanted the vines. He laid out the town of Sonoma, and planted his own vineyard. He had been ordered to protect the northern frontier of California from the Russians, and he parceled out land to relatives.

Maria Carrillo, his mother-in-law, started a rancho in Santa Rosa. She planted the first grapes in the Santa Rosa area, becoming, perhaps, the first woman vintner in California. Henry Fitch got the huge Sotoyome Rancho, and he in turn gave part of that to his rancho manager, Cyrus Alexander, in the valley that would bear his name. Vallejo remained a power in Sonoma even after the Bear Flag revolt, and became a further link in the area’s viticultural history by selling some property to Agoston Haraszthy, the man who would transform California wine.

Agoston Haraszthy: Larger than Life

Agoston Haraszthy, made of the stuff of legends, had gained and lost several fortunes by 1856 when he bought several hundred acres from Vallejo in Sonoma and turned his considerable attention and energies to making and promoting wine. At this time the California wine industry was centered in Southern California, and while grapes were planted and wine was made in Northern California, the major production remained in the South.

Colonel or Count Haraszthy (take your pick, both titles are self-bestowed) began tireless promoting of wine, wrote a treatise for the State Agricultural Society, sold thousands of cuttings and rooted vines, started Buena Vista (a winery which still exists today), which included a grandiose Pompeiian villa, a stone winery and extensive caves, entered his wine in competitions, lobbied the California legislature, traveled to Europe to survey winemaking practices and brought back 100,000 cuttings of over 300 varieties, called for the establishment of a state agricultural school, and experimented with Redwood cooperage.

He overextended himself, was forced out of Buena Vista by investors in 1866, and went off to Nicaragua, where, legend has it, he was devoured by alligators. He is not, as some have claimed, the “Father of California Wine,” but he is a major factor in its history. Due to his efforts the California wine became nationally known and the focus shifted from the area around Los Angeles to Northern California.

The Contributions of Immigrants

As immigrants continued to settle in Sonoma County throughout the Nineteenth Century. They brought with them their grape growing and winemaking skills and traditions. Although mainly in the Sonoma Valley, grape growing flourished throughout the county as French, Germans and Italians (lots of Italians) came to Sonoma County and set out their vineyards on the hillsides and in the valleys. Their traditions and some of their wineries remain. Gundlach-Bundschu, Korbel, Simi, Foppiano, Seghesio are all Sonoma County wineries that date back to the Nineteenth Century and this time of expansion.

A lot of Zinfandel, the mystery grape with no pinpointed European ancestor, did wonderfully well here and became the basis of much of the red wine. Just as the Sonoma wine industry was getting going, the scourge of Phylloxera dealt it a major blow. In the 1870s for the first time more grapes and wine were produced in Northern California than in the southern part of the state. In 1873 Phylloxera, a small yellow root-feeding aphid, was first discovered on Sonoma County vines.

It has probably done more damage to wine production than any other vine pest. The Phylloxera feeds on the roots of vines, and opens the root systems to attack by bacteria and fungi. The French first detected the effects of this bug native to American wild vines in 1863. Phylloxera had caused widespread devastation in Europe, but had been largely ignored in this country.

By 1880 California was feeling the effects to the extent that the California legislature established a State Board of Viticultural Commissioners to try to find a way to stop the dreaded pest. It took cooperation between France and America to come to a solution. The pest is native to East Coast American wild vines. These vines have developed a resistence to it. So using rootstock from these resistant vines with a vine top of vitis vinifera, the European grape species that makes decent wine grapes, grafted on, became the basis of the solution.

The wine industry conquered phylloxera in the late 1880s using various species of grafted rootstock, although one type, AXR1, promoted by the University of California proved to be to be not so resistant to a new form of Phylloxera which emerged in the 1980s. The county’s vineyards shrank from 23,000 acres in 1892 to a low of 6,000 acres a few years later, but then rebounded to 15,000 by 1901.

Three other 19th Century wineries deserve mention: DeTurk, Fountaingrove, and Italian Swiss Colony. Isaac DeTurk’s Santa Rosa winery was the largest of its time with a capacity of a million gallons by 1888, and DeTurk was a leader in the industry, serving on the Viticultural Commission. At Fountaingrove near Santa Rosa in the 1870s Thomas Lake Harris founded a utopian cult, the Brotherhood of the New Life, that made wine with supposed mystical properties.

When Harris was run out of town for supposed sexual improprieties in 1892, Kanaye Nagasawa, Harris’ manager, an intelligent noble Japanese who spoke with a Scottish accent, took over and became “the Japanese Baron of Santa Rosa,” managing and then owning the property until his death in 1934. Italian Swiss Colony started in 1881 as an experiment to give poor Italian immigrants a chance to own property by working the land.

The experiment failed, but Italian Swiss Colony became a leading producer of wine both before and after Prohibition. As Sonoma County wine boomed and busted in the 1880’s and 1890’s, a major power emerged: The California Wine Association. This great conglomerate was the dominant force in California wine from its start until Prohibition. Formed initially by seven wineries banding together to save themselves from a national depression in 1894, CWA became the force in California wine until Prohibition, eventually owning Italian Swiss Colony and many other wineries, and using cutthroat business practices to insure its dominance.

Prohibition to Present

Prohibition changed the face of Sonoma’s wine industry. Acreage increased from 17,000 in 1920 to 21,000 in 1930 as demand for grapes for home wine grew. A “head of household” could legally make up to 200 gallons of wine, and market for grapes boomed. The quality grapevines, the cabernets and chardonnays, were ripped out and tough red grapes like Alicante Brouchet, which could survive a rail tank car journey across the country and still be crushed and make wine, were planted.

Some wineries survived making either legal wine for medicinal or sacramental purposes or by making and selling unreported wine during this period. The quality part of Sonoma wine was wiped out by Prohibition. After repeal many Sonoma wineries were small affairs, many operated by Italian American families, making bulk wine. The years from repeal through the 1960s were lean tough years, acreage declining from 21,000 to 11,000 between 1930 and 1961.

The wine revolution that began in the mid-1960s turned that around, as renewed interest in better wines infused new energy into the wine industry, and quantity and quality returned to Sonoma County. Several older wineries, including Sebastiani, Seghesio, Foppiano and Pedroncelli, established brands that gained a national reputation.

Optimistic, energetic, newcomers took over Buena Vista and Simi, started up Hanzell, Dry Creek, Clos Du Bois, Kenwood, Windsor, Haywood, Landmark, Davis Bynum, Hop Kiln, Preston, Alexander Valley Vineyards, and a score of others. Vine acreage doubled, from 12,000 to 24,000 between 1968 and 1975. The wine-consuming public learned to like and demand better wine, and Sonoma County grape growers and wineries both cultivated and supplied that demand.

Grapes replaced prunes and apples, and in 1987 grapes became the leading agricultural crop in the county, surging ahead of milk production. A reappearance of phylloxera in the 1980s hurt, but it did not slow down Sonoma’s wine industry. While corporations have bought a number of Sonoma wineries, including Simi, Glen Ellen, Chateau St. Jean, Chateau Souverain and Geyser Peak, the corporations have largely respected the special nature of the wineries they own and the vineyards they control. Although corporations own more than a few Sonoma wineries, the two biggest operations in Sonoma County, Gallo and Kendall Jackson, remain family run businesses not public corporations.

The Special Natures of the Many Sonomas

While in just about any temperate climate grapes can be grown, only in a few places in the world can grapes attain that special richness and complexity that make world class wine. You need a special combination of warm days and cool nights during the growing season, the right soils and topography to allow grape sugars to ripen slowly and flavors from the earth to develop in the clusters that will yield a wine capable of gaining further complexity through aging. “Heat Summation,” a system of measuring climate derived from the length of days and the average daily temperature during the growing season, provides a valuable clue, but it does not tell the whole story. Not just the “degree days” that Heat Summation measures are important. When and for how long it is hot or cool, and spikes in temperature are important as well. So are soils, slope, humidity, fog, cloud cover, wind and the way sunlight hits a vineyard. Sonoma County has that rare combination of factors that make it one of the world’s great wine areas. In fact in Sonoma, we are blessed with many areas. The great strength of Sonoma County wine and grapes lies in its diversity. Within its borders Sonoma County comprises eleven separate appellations, or, more correctly, American Viticultural Areas (AVA). Each of these districts has a distinct climate, geography, soils and history, and each produces distinctive wines.

• Los Carneros in the south cooled by San Pablo Bay, comprises flatlands and rolling hills and produces Burgundian varietals, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
• Sonoma Valley, where the North Coast wine industry originated, enjoys some of the same cooling fogs of Carneros, but gets warmer up valley. In addition to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, Sonoma Valley has a reputation for its Merlot, Riesling, Cabernet and Zinfandel.
• Sonoma Mountain west of Glen Ellen in the highlands lies totally within the Sonoma Valley area and is known for its high quality mountain Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel.
• The Russian River area, one of Sonoma County’s largest, covers about 150 square miles between Healdsburg and Sebastopol. Much of the Russian River AVA has a cool climate with marine influence and valley fogs and produces great Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays.
• Green Valley, a smaller area within Russian River, has an even cooler climate than its surroundings and produces some very fine sparkling wines from the same Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays.
• Chalk Hill, another small viticultural area within the Russian River area, boasts volcanic ash soils and a slightly warmer climate, produces some great Chardonnay.
• Sonoma Coast and Northern Sonoma are two large areas that comprise other areas. Sonoma Coast has cooling influences and tends towards Burgundian varietals while Northern Sonoma with its drier inland valleys and ridges favors Bordeaux varietals and Zinfandel.
• Dry Creek Valley northwest of Healdsburg is within the Northern Sonoma designation and its hot days and cool nights make for great Zinfandel.
• Alexander Valley, northeast of Healdsburg, displays some of the same warmer climate characteristics and makes some great Zinfandels but also Cabernets and Chardonnays and Merlots.
• Knight’s Valley in northeast Sonoma County comprises a small upland valley separating Alexander Valley from Napa Valley. Beringer Vineyards owns most of the vineyards in Knight’s Valley, and the warmth and relative lack of fog make for great Cabernets and Sauvignon Blancs.

Sonoma County grapes have a proud history, but perhaps the best is yet come. The diverse soils and climates allow Sonoma County growers to produce among the world’s best of many different varietals. Our fascinating and complicated wine history, only hinted at this account and yet to be fully recorded, shows that although there are cycles of boom and bust, the direction over the long haul is towards progress, increased quality and overall quantity. Right now there are plans afoot to put more vineyards in along the ridges in the northwest part of the county, and in the area west of Sebastopol, and in the south near Petaluma. Wine making and grape growing are very competitive businesses, but a spirit of cooperation pervades Sonoma County. There are technical groups both among the wine makers and grape growers that meet regularly and exchange ideas. The Sonoma County Wine Library is a cooperatively financed joint venture with the wine and grape industry which since it opened its doors in 1988 has provided business and technical information to the all sizes of growers and wineries. This cooperative spirit has allowed the industry to grow tremendously in size and stature and continues to influence our destiny as we face the new millennium.

2008 Update: More wineries pop up, growers plant more vineyard acres and play and the players in the industry becomes more complex. A record harvest in 2005 broke records with tonnage and dollars. Francis Ford Coppola bought the property that housed Chateau Souverain. Kendall Jackson bought Murphy-Goode. Global warming threatens the whole winegrowing area of the North Coast. Sonoma wine keeps earning respect and keeping green with biodynamics and sustainable methods, and, beyond that, discerning any trends is a fool’s errand.