Sonoma: Russian River Valley

Most of the Russian River’s course is through other AVAs in mendocino and Sonoma counties. Only when the river escapes from Alexander Valley through a narrow gorge in the mountains at Healdsburg, then flows on, first south, then west, in its journey to the Pacific do the watercourse and the Russian River Valley AVA become one and the same.

Cool, often foggy, the AVA blossomed as a wine-producing region in the 1970s when new winery owners in the area began bottling locally grown grapes under Sonoma county labels. It took the district fewer than 20 years to prove itself eminently well adapted to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. In a few hillside locations such as Martinelli’s Jackass Vineyard, Zinfandel does amazingly well. Joe Swan was an early pioneer. Dehlinger, Sonoma-Cutrer, Rochioli, Gary Farrell, Merry Edwards, Kosta Browne, Paul Hobbs, and Williams & Selyem are among the region’s best-known producers, and dozens more emerged in rapid fire in the early 2000s—some without vineyards of their own, some without production facilities, and a few with neither, creating brands first, and finding the grapes and labour as they went along. The boom was ignited by interest in the region’s Pinot Noir that surged from the late 1990s, with total vineyard acreage ballooning from around 4,000 acres then to over 18,000 acres/7,287 ha in 2013. Chardonnay remains the most-planted variety, but Pinot Noir is not far behind; this one—two Burgundian punch countering Napa’s mastery of Bordeaux varieties. Such is the cachet of Russian River Valley that various interested parties have twice successfully petitioned to have the AVA expanded, in 2003 and 2011, thereby blurring the lines of authenticity, and contributing to the rapid increase in vine acreage totals since 2003. Russian River Valley is widely thought of as being chilly during the growing season, yet some vineyard sites on the eastern side of the AVA can be as warm as alexander valley.