Petaluma Gap AVA

And it's actually quite sunny and warm and dry up there when the sun, um, comes out kind of in the, in the morning.

But if you travel inland from the Sonoma Coast and you work your way across the Russian River plain and you head towards Sonoma Town and Sonoma Valley, and one of the routes through there is through what's, uh, called the Petaluma Gap, and this is an AVA, an American Viticultural Area, uh, recognized maybe 15, 20 years ago.

And so this gap channels wind and fog from the coast, from the Pacific, into Sonoma, the southern part of Sonoma Valley and into Carneros.

And so some little vineyards or some growing areas in the Petaluma Gap are actually behave more oceanic than some of those vineyards out on the Sonoma Coast, which are up on these ridge lines.

And that's because of the way the geography funnels and the way the landscape contours the ocean influences to them.

And so you can have places in the Petaluma Gap 20 kilometers inland that are arguably more oceanic than places two miles from the ocean on the top of these hills.

And so some of those sites, and what I mean by that is those inland places, they trap fog and cold air, and they stay cool.

And I've put these to the test and tried some of the, the Pinots and, um, Chardonnays from there.

It's California Wine Country with Dan Berger, and we've got special guest Steve San Giacomo in the house from San Giacomo Family Growers.

The Petaluma Gap, well represented here.

Am I correct?

That is.

Try a few different wines from our Robert Toad Vineyard, which in the northern part of Petaluma Gap planted.

1999, a little undiscovered part of Pelham Gap at that time.

Pre-Gap, actually.

And so with the five clones, we ferment all of them separate, and we have fun with