The Best of Sonoma

By Antonio Galloni

I spent eight days in Sonoma County in January and also tasted a number of additional Sonoma wines late last year for this article. Getting a good look at the wines of Sonoma is not an easy task. For starters, at approximately three times the size of Napa Valley, Sonoma is a vast region made even more complicated by the distances that are often required to visit the top addresses with thoroughness. I have to be honest and say that I have very mixed feelings about Sonoma wines. I tasted 1,100 wines for this article of which 693 scored 85 points or higher (69%) and thus merited inclusion in this report. I have always strived for the most democratic tastings possible, and we cast a very wide net, so it is possible that the large percentage of wines that scored under 85 points is more a reflection of the sheer scale of Sonoma rather than a true indicator of average quality. Still, even under the most forgiving of scenarios, the reality is that I tasted hundreds of boring wines with no real personalities. The proliferation of vineyard-designate wines from sites that are average in quality is truly alarming because they threaten to confuse the marketplace given the lack of a formal qualitative ranking of vineyards. I won’t bore readers too much with the number of instances in which I tasted a lineup of multiple Pinot Noirs from a single producer that all tasted basically the same.