Southern Sonoma is one of those places that fails miserably to raise your blood pressure. The Sonoma Valley and neighboring Carneros region are just so darned laid-back, slow going and leafy that looking for parking is unnervingly easy and even sitting in what passes as rush-hour traffic here will barely get you tapping your fingers.

Apparently it’s always been a pretty good, stress-free life in these parts. Mother Nature might mix things up a bit with the occasional fire or earthquake, but she also provides hot springs, redwood forests, burbling streams, fertile soils, and a friendly climate. In terms of climate, scenery and growing conditions, the Sonoma valley is a mini-Napa Valley but has been spared the same level of development by some historical rolls of the dice.

In a sense, southern Sonoma is fairly close to paradise: a place where wine, history, scenery, and some of the best California produce combine in an area small enough to tour in a day or two. A visitor can spend the morning sipping splendid wine then in the afternoon stroll through historic Victorian splendor, or traverse a muddy mountain one hour and spend the next in a spa covered in therapeutic mud. There are few other parts of the Wine County as compact yet packed with opportunity.

Hundreds of years ago, these same natural attributes attracted numerous Native American tribes, who lived peacefully side by side without the turf battles common elsewhere. Even author Jack London sensed something intoxicating in the air. He relocated from Oakland to put down deep roots in the Sonoma Valley, transforming himself from working-class hero to gentleman farmer and land owner. The main characters in his 1913 novel Valley of the Moon spent months wandering up and down California in search of their nirvana, the Sonoma Valley.

The lucky locals have worked hard against the odds to keep their valley and flatlands so inviting. In the 1960s, they fought off a plan developed by car-crazed California to drive a freeway down the middle of Sonoma Valley. Instead it was built through the middle of Santa Rosa to the west. While fame and freeways brought the heaving masses to Napa and northern Sonoma, the valley became the land that development forgot.

By 1980, there was a grand total of two sets of traffic lights. There aren’t many more now. One of the busiest intersections in the valley, on the south side of Sonoma plaza, is still a four-way stop and drivers are remarkably polite. The valley’s modern custodians are still a potent force, even defending a few local chickens in the downtown Sonoma threatened with resettlement. Such is the passion here to keep the “slow” in this place the locals call Slow-noma.

Can the valley keep its identity amid modern population and development pressures? It’s trying hard but is swimming against the tide of tourism. Wineries and hotels are being mopped up by bigger and bigger conglomerates. The succulent local food is transforming into ever-more-expensive ethnic cuisine. An average family home in the valley now costs over $1.5 million. Visit quickly before Napa hops over the mountains and ends it all.

In the long term, there’s more hope for Carneros simply because there is no “there” there. Ask anyone to name one town in Carneros and most will list Sonoma, for example, a place also claimed by its eponymous valley. In Carneros, the vineyards that are slowly covering any remaining pastureland not already underwater are effectively spiking future development. Chances are that nothing much will change here anytime soon--except perhaps that rush-hour traffic on the two-lane roads may worsen as more people visit or move to the Napa and Sonoma Valleys.

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