The history of the Anderson Valley reads much like that of Northern California’s many other verdant valleys. Native American tribes that had lived off the land for centuries were eventually supplanted by white settlers in the 1800s, drawn by new opportunities in California and the gold rush. As in other parts of Northern California, the settlers found ample forests of Redwoods that could be logged to supply building materials for California’s boom and plenty of fertile land for farming.

There is one important difference, however between the Anderson Valley and its more famous counterparts in Sonoma and Napa, which is its distance from the Bay Area. This remoteness not only delayed development of the agricultural industry and slowed its eventual growth but to this day is perhaps the biggest single factor influencing the valley’s distinct culture. Urban life never got a look in here. Ironically, this remoteness was said to have been what attracted the first settlers to the valley – Walter Anderson and his family.

Sonoma and Napa counties grew quickly in the 1800s due mainly to their proximity to the major population centers around San Francisco Bay and the early construction of railroads. The lumber and agricultural products that made many fortunes didn’t have far to travel to their biggest market. The wines could be transported quickly by train or boat to eager city drinkers without spoiling. Napa and Sonoma thus became established wine regions and even after modern transport eliminated those advantages their success was already assured and reinforced by a steady influx of residents and visitors from the Bay Area less than two hours away.

The Andersons didn’t arrive in here until the 1850s and were followed by only a trickle of other settlers. By then, the players that would become pivotal in the development of Napa and Sonoma as agricultural and wine regions were already well established and were soon making thousands of gallons of wine. A handful of large farms were established in the Anderson Valley supplying livestock and produce to local lumber mills in the valley and on the coast. Tradesmen arrive to service the small but growing population and the trickle of travelers heading to the coast, including William Boone after whom the town of Boonville is named.

As the population swelled to over a 1000 people the valley’s geographic isolation, which still makes getting there today rather time consuming, acted as a cap on further growth and also allowed the valley residents to start developing a unique, isolationist culture, including their own form of local dialect called Boontling. The splendid isolation drew hippies and other urban escapees in the 1960s and 70s, more of less ensuring the valley’s counter culture continued to this day. There was a brief threat of urbanization in the growth frenzy of the 1970s but new zoning laws in the subsequent decades have more or less put paid to any major future development.

Today the valley’s residents number about 1200, just a couple of hundred more than at the beginning of the 1900s. The population of hippies, farmers and urban refugees clearly love their little valley and has come to grudgingly accept that tourism is here to stay. It will stay firmly on their terms, however.

The Wines

Winemaking got off to a slow start in the Anderson Valley. As Eastern Mendocino farms started supplying grapes to the growing number of Napa and Sonoma wineries in the late 1800s, the wine industry in the Anderson Valley was limited to a few European immigrants making wines for personal consumption. In addition to the remoteness of the valley, which hindered transport of products like grapes and wine to the big Bay Area markets, the relatively cool weather made ripening early varietals of grapes difficult. Historians also note that most of the early settlers in the valley were from the Mid West, a region that had no culture of winemaking or drinking.

The arrival of Italian settlers in the 1890s and early 1900s was believed to have been a catalyst for winemaking in the valley. They brought knowledge of winemaking and the best place to grow grapes – above the fog on the sunnier hillsides, particularly Greenwood Ridge, still the site of some renowned vineyards today. The valley’s wine industry had started to grow (but was by no means booming) when prohibition brought it all to a screeching halt.

After prohibition, the momentum was never regained. Grapes were still grown in the valley but most were sold to established wineries in Sonoma County. The current growth spurt in the wine industry didn’t really begin until the 1960s, when the post-war boom in the wider Californian wine industry filtered into the valley helped, in the 1970s, by a viticulture survey that identified the Anderson Valley along with the Carneros district in Napa and Knights Valley in Sonoma as the most promising areas for grape growing. What started as a trickle started by modern pioneers Donald Edmeades and Tony Husch, who bonded their respective wineries in the early 1970s, soon turned into a rush.

In 1983 the valley was grated American Viticultural Area status and by the end of the 1980s the region’s cool growing conditions had been identified by sparkling wine producers as some of the best in California for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, the two main champagne varietals. Indeed, justone champagne house – Roederer Estate – planted those two varietals so rapidly in the late 1980s and into the 1990s that it was almost single handedly responsible for much of the growth in the valley’s vineyard acreage at that time.

The valley is classified as a Region II climate, one of the coolest and ideal for making dry and well-balanced wines with the right grapes. Marine fog keeps valley nights cool, sometimes uncomfortably so in the summer, but the further east you go towards Boonville the less of an influence it has. Four grape varietals that thrive in this climate have come to dominate the valley’s vineyards – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Gewürztraminer and Riesling.

Anderson Valley Gewürztraminers and Rieslings, in particular, have earned a reputation as some of the most elegant and aromatic in the state. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay were for a long time grown primarily for sparkling wine production, resulting in some of California’s best champagnes but not necessarily the best still wines. Recently, however, still wines have become the received more attention from winemakers. New vine clones and improved winemaking techniques have resulted in something of a Pinot renaissance in the valley since the late 1990s, attracting yet more wineries (and visitors) and further boosting vineyard acreage. Of the approximately 2,400 acres of vineyards in the Anderson Valley, about half are now planted to Pinot.

Few other varietals will ripen down near the valley floor but at higher elevations, above the fog line, it’s a different story, so different that in 1997 a cluster of the hilltop ridges south of the valley and a few at its western end were granted their own status as an AVA called Mendocino Ridges. At these sunnier, higher elevations, Zinfandel is one of the most common varietals and makes a more reserved style of wine far removed from the jammy, overblown Zins typical from hotter parts of the state.

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