Sonoma County and Napa County are located in the Wine Country, north of the San Francisco Bay Area. The largest city in Sonoma county is Santa Rosa. There are over 400 wineries in the area north of San Francisco, mostly located in the area's valleys, including Napa Valley in Napa County, and the Sonoma Valley, Alexander Valley, Dry Creek Valley, Bennett Valley and Russian River Valley in Sonoma County.

Sonoma Valley is the birthplace of the California wine industry and often called The Valley of the Moon. Sonoma Valley is home to some of the earliest vineyards and wineries in the state, some of which survived the phylloxera epidemic of the 1870s and the impact of Prohibition. Its wineries are generally well prepared for receiving tourists, and Sonoma Valley offers a wide range of year round festivals and events, including the prestigious Sonoma Valley Film Festival. Today, this small valley's wines are protected by the US federal government's Sonoma Valley and Carneros AVAs (or American Viticultural Areas).

Napa County was one of the original counties of California, created in 1850 at the time of statehood. Parts of the county's territory were given to Lake County in 1861. Napa County, once the producer of many different crops, is known today for its wine industry, rising in the 1960s to the first rank of wine regions with France and Italy. John Patchett established the valley's first commercial vineyard in 1858. In 1861 Charles Krug established Napa Valley's first commercial winery in St. Helena. Viticulture in Napa suffered several setbacks in the late 1800s and early 1900s, including an outbreak of the vine disease phylloxera, the legal institution of Prohibition, and the Great Depression. The wine industry in Napa Valley recovered, and helped by the results of the Paris Wine Tasting of 1976, came to be seen as capable of producing world-class wine. Almost 4.7 million people visit Napa Valley each year, making it the second most popular tourist destination in California, second only to Disneyland.

California Real Estate

Napa Sonoma Valley Cabin Rentals