Sonoma County: The 2023 and 2024 Vintages, From Fog to Finish
Sonoma County: The 2023 and 2024 Vintages, From Fog to Finish
By Jeremy Young
Sonoma County is not one place. It is a sprawling 1,768 square miles of fog channels, river benches, sun-baked inland valleys, and ridgelines that catch the Pacific before anyone else does. Treating it as a single growing region is the fastest way to get a vintage wrong. A year that hands the Russian River Valley a flawless Pinot harvest can be a completely different story thirty miles inland in Alexander Valley.
That said, 2023 and 2024 gave the entire county something it had not enjoyed in years: water in the ground and patience in the season. After a punishing run of drought, two consecutive wet winters reset the vines, refilled the soils, and set up back-to-back vintages that producers are calling some of the best of their careers. I tasted over 300 wines from across the county for this report. Here is how the two years unfolded, AVA by AVA, and why these bottles deserve your attention.
Sonoma 2023: The Long Exhale
If 2022 was a year of reflexes, 2023 was a year of observation. Record winter rains saturated the soils and pushed bud break back by as much as a month. Then the weather simply stayed cool and even, refusing to spike, refusing to rush anything. Producers who normally start sampling fruit in early August did not see temperatures climb out of the low 80s until July. Harvest crept later and later, stretching well into autumn, with some growers picking red fruit into November.
The most intriguing wrinkle came in September, when sugar levels stalled out for weeks. Winemakers reported fruit sitting at 19 to 20 brix while the flavors, skins, and seeds kept maturing. Grapes that read low on sugar were tasting fully ripe, which meant 2023 produced wines of real phenolic depth at lower potential alcohols. That is the holy grail for balance.
The result is a vintage of clarity and lift. Reds lean toward red fruit, florals, and energy rather than brooding power. Whites carry high natural acidity, mineral depth, and texture without weight. These are wines that whisper rather than shout, and they are built to age gracefully. The cool, even ripening laid down the kind of structure and freshness that rewards a decade in the cellar, particularly for Pinot Noir and the Bordeaux reds.
Sonoma 2024: Smooth and Outstanding
The 2024 season started wet again, with one Dry Creek producer logging 43 inches of rain by the end of March before the spigot shut off and ideal, mild growing weather settled in. Bud break landed right on schedule, around the spring equinox. Then July delivered the hottest week since the infamous 2022 heat dome, with a stretch running from the high 90s past 105, scorching some thin-skinned varieties like Petite Sirah and reducing crop load in spots. Resilient Zinfandel mostly shrugged it off.
What made 2024 special was the finish. After that summer heat, harvest arrived with mild days and cool nights, exactly the conditions that let grapes hold acidity while reaching full flavor. Growers across the county used words like “clockwork” and “smooth.” One veteran Alexander Valley grower called it one of the best quality vintages in his 48 years of farming, noting the vines were so well balanced that he did almost no fruit dropping or canopy work. Harvest was compact, often wrapping by mid-October, with none of the rain interruptions that complicated 2023.
If 2023 is the cerebral, slow-built vintage, 2024 is the crowd-pleaser: ripe, balanced, generous, and remarkably consistent across varieties. The one catch was quantity. Yields came in light in several pockets, part of a broader trend that saw the North Coast crop shrink, but the fruit that came in was clean and concentrated.
Five AVAs Worth Knowing
Russian River Valley. Here the fog is both clock and compass, rolling in off the Pacific and dropping temperatures by as much as 40 degrees overnight. In 2023, that natural air conditioning combined with the cool season to produce Pinot Noir of unusual purity and floral lift, with bright cranberry and wild strawberry tones, fine tannins, and a savory forest-floor edge. Chardonnay was arguably the standout of the vintage countywide, with one top winemaker calling 2023 the best he had ever seen for showing the differences between individual sites. In 2024, the warmer summer added a touch more flesh and roundness, and the compact harvest delivered Pinot and Chardonnay with both energy and generosity. Both years are excellent here; 2023 leans precise, 2024 leans plush.
Sonoma Coast and West Sonoma Coast. The extreme western edge, including the cool ridgetops of Fort Ross-Seaview, is the county’s frontier for tense, structured Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The cool 2023 vintage was tailor-made for these sites, producing bold yet structured Pinot built on muscular tannins and deep fruit that needs cellar time to unwind. The 2024s from the coast show the same coastal intensity with a slightly riper, more approachable profile thanks to the warmer mid-season.
Petaluma Gap. Sonoma’s youngest AVA, before West Sonoma Coast, is defined by relentless afternoon wind that funnels through the gap toward San Pablo Bay. That wind thickens grape skins and concentrates flavor, which makes it a Syrah and Pinot Noir specialist. In both vintages the Gap’s wines showed savory, peppery Syrah and Pinot with serious structural grip. The cool 2023 amplified the savory, spice-driven side; 2024’s warmth rounded the edges without sacrificing the wind-driven concentration.
Dry Creek Valley. Zinfandel country, full stop, with old vines planted on alluvial valley loam and rocky upland soils. The vintage swing here is instructive. The 2022s were dense and blue-black; the 2023s eased off, leaning brighter and fresher with red fruit replacing the brooding tones, structure intact but elegance at the core. The 2024 vintage gave Zinfandel a warmer ripening curve, and because Zin held up so well through the July heat, the wines show classic Dry Creek brambly fruit and spice with excellent balance. Sauvignon Blanc, picked early, cuts through with verve in both years.
Alexander Valley. Warm, inland, and built for Bordeaux varieties, especially Cabernet Sauvignon. In 2023, the slow ripening let flavor catch up to sugar, producing Cabernet and Merlot that feel transparent and defined, with acidity carrying the fruit and oak in harmony, a graceful style suited to long aging. The 2024 vintage may be the sweet spot here: that “clockwork” harvest with cool nights gave Cabernet ripe tannins, deep color, and retained freshness. This is a valley that often gets overlooked next to Napa, and these two vintages are a strong argument to pay attention.
What Did the Best
Across the county, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay were the headline winners in 2023, rewarded by the long cool season with precision and aromatic lift. In 2024, the field broadened: Cabernet and Merlot in Alexander Valley, Zinfandel in Dry Creek, and continued excellence in Russian River Pinot and Chardonnay. If you want wines to cellar, reach for 2023 coastal Pinot and Alexander Valley Cabernet. If you want wines that drink beautifully sooner without giving up structure, 2024 is your year.
The Business Climate: Real Headwinds, Real Reasons for Hope
It would be dishonest to pretend the market is easy right now. National wine consumption has declined for two straight years. Tasting room visitation is trending down as rising costs, from bottle prices to tasting fees to travel, deter visitors. The direct-to-consumer channel that smaller wineries depend on is under pressure, with shipment volumes dipping below 2019 levels even as dollar value holds up on higher prices. The North Coast grape crop value slipped again in 2025, and several hundred thousand tons of California grapes went unpicked statewide for lack of buyers. Sonoma’s debate over a proposed Wine Improvement District, a fee on DTC sales to fund collective marketing, has been contentious precisely because nobody wants to add cost in a lean year.
And yet. Here is why I am optimistic about this region.
Sonoma is not Napa, and in this market, that is an advantage. It is overwhelmingly family-owned, more affordable per bottle, and far more diverse in what it grows. When consumers trade down from luxury pricing, Sonoma is exactly where they land. The numbers behind the county are genuinely large: Sonoma wine is worth roughly $8 billion at retail across America, wine tourism brings in $1.2 billion a year, and one in four local jobs is tied to the industry.
The clearest signal of confidence is on the ground. At least seven Sonoma wineries opened new tasting rooms in 2025, a striking vote of faith in a tough year. While many rooms saw fewer visitors, others were busier than ever, and the producers who are winning are the ones getting creative: intimate experiences, traveling wine club events, going to customers in key markets rather than waiting for them to drive up Highway 101. Small producers making fewer than 1,000 cases are actually seeing visitor numbers rise. The smaller, story-driven, nimble brand is the one thriving, and Sonoma is full of exactly those.
Most importantly, the wine in the bottle has rarely been better. Two consecutive vintages of this caliber, after years of drought and fire anxiety, is a gift. The growers who farmed 2023 and 2024 have material to work with that genuinely rivals the best years in living memory. Quality this high, at Sonoma’s relative value, in a market hungry for honest wine with a sense of place, is a foundation worth betting on.
The Wines
I reviewed over 400 wines from Sonoma County for this report. All wines I rated 89 points or above are listed below.