Celebrating California Wine Month
It’s the month to celebrate California! This is the largest wine-making state in the US!
A couple of facts from the California Wine Institute
- California is the 4th largest wine producer in the World and makes 81% of the wine in the US.
- There are 630,000 Acres of Wine grapes planted in California and 6,200 wineries!
- Of the 58 counties in California, you can find wine grapes grown in 49!
We love California and often travel there, but there are so many wine regions that we have yet to visit them all!
So, to celebrate, we’re doing a bit of a breakdown on ALL the AVAs in California! (I’ll be adding to my list of AVAs to visit!)
Regions for Wine in California
With 152 AVAs (American Viticultural Areas) in California, wrapping your head around that can be a bit daunting!
Let’s first break the state down into some basic regions.
From North to South, you have:
The Far North
The Inland Valleys
The North Coast
The Sierra Foothills
The Central Coast
and Southern California
That seems pretty straightforward, right?
Well it breaks it down into regions we can digest, but…some of those region are a bit more complex.
The Far North with its 5 scattered AVAs is easy enough to grasp (and to fit on a page). But when you get to the North Coast? That’s another ball game.
Within the North Coast you find Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, Solano, and more!
The Central Coast is more of the same, covering San Francisco Bay, San Benito County, the Santa Cruz Mountains, Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Monterey County, Livermore Valley and the Santa Clara Valley!
Then there is the Inland Valleys with the Sacramento Valley, Madera County, the San Joaquin Valley, Lodi and beyond.
The Sierra Foothills bring in Amador, Calaveras, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, and Yuba Counties.
Finely, in Southern California you find Temecula, Los Angeles and San Diego Counties and the Cucamonga Valley!
With 152 regions we have quite a bit to dive into. Strap in my friends! This will be a fun ride!
Robin Renken is a wine writer and Certified Specialist of Wine and WSET 3 Certified. She and her husband Michael travel to wine regions interviewing vineyard owners and winemakers and learning the stories behind the glass.
When not traveling they indulge in cooking and pairing wines with food at home in Las Vegas.
Check out our book series, “Tempting Spoonfuls” available through Amazon!
Inspired by the flavors and aromas in wines, these books create “tempting spoonfuls” of flavors to pair with wines.
“Tempting Spoonfuls – Pairing single bites with glorious wines” – Our first book paired wines from boutique wineries on the west coast, in California, Oregon, and Washington, with delicious spoonfuls.
This book is 60 pages, 18 recipes, lots of beautiful photos, and insights into some fantastic small wineries!
“Tempting Spoonfuls – small bites paired with wines from around the Globe” – This book takes us around the globe to explore 12 wine regions, a wine from the region, and then gives you a recipe for a pairing!
A slightly larger book at 104 pages, this time you learn about pairing with a type of wine from a region. Rather than a specific bottle, you can look for a style of wine from a region and feel confident that it will go well with the recipe pairing we provide. We give you 12 recipes, each to pair with a wine.
The goal is to make your mouth water and encourage you to create your own “Tempting Spoonfuls.”
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