“Another time, another place,” is the marketing tag line conjured up by the Mendocino marketing folks. Taken at face value it might seem odd to be telling the world how backwards and distant your county is, but that is indeed the unique charm of this remarkably sophisticated backwater of Northern California.

In much of Sonoma and Napa counties, rural character has long since become more of marketing idea than a reality, but not so in Mendocino. The few towns there are in this part of the world have populations that are still outnumbered by local sheep and cattle. Even U.S. 101, which exists as wide and fast freeway through most of Sonoma, puts on the brakes as it crosses the hills from Cloverdale into Mendocino — a symbolic and literal reminder that residents here live life at a slower pace. Sonoma likes to chuckle at its “Slownoma” nickname but life there is a positive whirlwind compared to most of Mendocino.

Mendocino does three things very well: scenery, agriculture and hippy. It’s a beautiful part of the world. From the rugged coastline to the inland redwood forests and craggy mountains there’s still barely any sign of human encroachment. Since adventurous immigrants first discovered the place in the mid-1800s and stole it from the contented Native American tribes, Mendocino has been an agricultural wonderland, blessed as it is with numerous microclimates in which to grow almost any crop including grapes. The region’s remoteness and scarcity of population was also the biggest draw in the 1970s for the counterculture movement of urban refugees as they fled burgeoning Bay Area capitalism to set up farms and communes among the Mendocino hills.

The counter culture spawned earth-friendly credentials that still exist to this day in Mendocino but also resulted in a few other claims to infamy that are less well publicized. In most other parts of wine country the term cash crop usually refers to expensive wine or bountiful produce. In Mendocino it’s still as likely to refer to an illegal crop that is smoked. Although much of the marijuana growing for which Mendocino was once infamous has now moved north to Humboldt County, as tourists and more traditional wine country cash crops have moved in from the south, the hills of central and northern Mendocino still get plenty of attention each year from black-clad federal drug enforcers. Local radio stations often report current locations of Drug Enforcement Agency helicopters during the summer and Fall marijuana growing season, however, another sign of the sense of splendid, anti-establishment isolation that many residents still cling to as the rest of the world continues to steadily encroach.

While the rest of California’s wine country has wheeled out the public relations bandwagon to publicize its increasing organic farming practices, Mendocino has been quietly leveraging its earth-friendly, counter culture credentials for decades to become the organic capital of wine country. In 2006 about 18% of the more than 16,000 acres of vineyards in the county were certified organic compared to just 5% in Napa County and a mere 1% in Sonoma County, according to the Mendocino Winegrowers Alliance. Even more of the vineyards are organic but not yet certified and this is a part of the world where organic is already considered so 20th Century. Biodynamic farming is now all the rage here and you’re as likely to hear the term “fish-friendly” as you are “solar powered.”

But Mendocino’s modesty and quiet determination to save the planet won’t necessarily bring home the bacon, financially speaking, a problem that is now being addressed with increasing fervor by local winery associations. For more than 100 years, Mendocino has been treated as the agricultural cash cow of Northern California, a place where crops are grown for someone to process and sell elsewhere. Now Mendocino want to keep some of that cash for itself and is ramping up its solar-powered PR machine. 

Fetzer Vineyards was for a decade or more the power behind that machine, putting Mendocino on the map by its sheer size. Now it is owned by a multinational corporation, its power to promote Mendocino has dwindled somewhat. The Anderson Valley, meanwhile, has been discovered as a prime pinot noir growing region and the trickle of new wineries that arrived in the 1980s and 1990s has started to swell, creating enough momentum to stir a few old timers off their rockers in sleepy Boonville. Eastern Mendocino still struggles with its identity despite being home to the largest city, Ukiah. Its patchwork of appellations and growing conditions are suited to just too many grape varietals for its own good and as a result there’s no particular wine for which it is known. The ingenious Coro Mendocino regional wine program seeks to fix this conundrum and has generated some much needed publicity.

Chances are it will be only a matter of time before the viticultural allure of the Anderson Valley spills over the eastern hills and combines with the sustainable farming movement to give winemaking a boost, bringing more winemakers and visitors up the slow road from Sonoma. But if they come, Mendocino runs the risk that many a child of the counterculture could start to crave life from another time and end up moving to another place.

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