page_title: Mendocino County wine
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Mendocino County wine / History
caption_attribution_description: man panning for gold on the Mokelumne
context_page_description: The Mendocino County wine is an appellation that designates wine made from grapes grown mostly in Mendocino County, California. The region is part of the larger North Coast AVA and one of California's largest and most climatically diverse wine growing regions. Mendocino County is one of the northernmost commercial wine grape regions in the state with two distinct climate zones separated by the Mendocino Range. Ten American Viticultural Areas have been designated within Mendocino County. Mendocino is one of the leading wine growing regions for organically produced wine grapes. Nearly 25% of the acreage in Mendocino County is grown organically. In 2004, the residents of the county voted to become the first GMO-free county in the United States in an initiative that was supported by many of the county's largest wineries. The county's widespread focus on organic viticulture has inspired journalists to describe it as "California's organic wine Mecca".
context_section_description: The name "Mendocino" comes from the family name of Mendoza in honor of the 16th century Spanish explorer Lorenzo Suárez de Mendoza, 4th conde de la Coruña who explored the Mendocino coast line and his cousin, Antonio de Mendoza the first viceroy of New Spain. The first vineyards in Mendocino were established in the 1850s in the Redwood Valley by returning farmers who failed to find their wealth and prosperity during the California Gold Rush. Most of these winery operations stayed small and were completely eradicated by the enactment of Prohibition in the United States in the early 20th century. With the commercial production of wine banned, vineyards were ripped out and replaced with tree nut and fruit orchards.
  The oldest continually operating commercial winery in Mendocino County is Parducci Wines founded in 1931 while Prohibition was still in place. Parducci remained the only commercial winery in Mendocino until the late 1960s. Part of this was due to the relative isolation of the region from the major wine market and business center of San Francisco (more than a 100 miles/160 km to the south), which was so pivotal to the development of the wine industries in nearby Napa and Sonoma County. In 1968, Fetzer Vineyards was founded and would eventually grow to be the largest wine producers in the county. Fetzer would also become a leader in steering the viticultural practices of the county towards more sustainable agriculture and organic wine production. Today nearly 25% of all the vineyards in the Mendocino County are certified organic by the California Certified Organic Farmers-the largest percentage of any county in the state of California.
  In 1971 wine production started in the Anderson Valley region. Approximately half of the wine brands produced in Mendocino County are now based in this Western AVA within Mendocino County.
caption: The first vineyards in Mendocino County were planted by prospectors from the California Gold Rush who failed to find their fortune and returned to the area as farmers.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "CanoScan LiDE 500F", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image Software": "Paint.NET v2.1b", "Image DateTime": "2006:09:25 08:03:38", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "2232", "Image Padding": "[]", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2006:09:25 08:03:38", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2006:09:25 08:03:38", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "5099", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "6598", "EXIF FileSource": "Reflection Print Scanner", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}