Designated in 1987, the Sonoma Coast AVA encompasses more than 500,000 acres. Its boundaries extend from San Pablo Bay in the South to the border with Mendocino County in the North, and the Pacific Ocean to the West. It’s simply vast, and typifies the old adage that Sonoma County has more soil types than all of France. To quote our friend and true Sonoma Coast pioneer, Andy Peay, “it goes interior about 45 miles, and is about 90 miles long. The soils are completely different and the temperature differences are 20 to 30 degrees during the middle of the day.” There’s clearly a need for a more specific designation for wines made in this rugged, windswept, and harsher environment.

Those vintners who’ve been earnestly producing wines from vines grown on or very near the actual Sonoma Coast will soon have their AVA distinction. The “West Sonoma Coast” was all tee’d up to be Northern California’s newest AVA before Covid-19 reared its ugly head, but fingers crossed it will soon be ratified. Soon our wines will list “West Sonoma Coast” on the bottles. Ideally we’d only have “Sonoma Coast” on the bottles, but because the current Sonoma Coast AVA includes vineyards 50 miles away from the ocean, it’s crucial to add the “West” distinction so people know their wine is genuinely from the coast.

Within about 5 miles of the ocean, and below 1,000 feet, there is a true cooling effect from the Pacific. The current coming down from the North is very cold, creating a vacuum to pull cool, wet air onshore and saturate coastal vineyards. Average rainfall totals here are higher than elsewhere in the Sonoma Coast, and fog settles into the vineyards which are often set at high elevations and on relatively steep slopes due to mountainuous Coastal Range terrain.