Sonoma County · Appellation

Sonoma Coast

At roughly 480,000 acres, Sonoma Coast is by far the largest and most disputed AVA in the county, established in 1987 with boundaries broad enough to include both frigid, wind-battered ridgetops within sight of the Pacific and warmer inland pockets nearly touching Sonoma Valley. That sprawl is precisely why growers have spent decades carving out more precise sub-appellations — Fort Ross-Seaview among them — to distinguish genuinely maritime "true" Sonoma Coast fruit from vineyards that share the name but not the fog. Where the coastal influence does hold, cool temperatures and thin, often Goldridge-derived soils produce some of California's most restrained Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.