Celebrating California's wine diversity

(SFGate) - California wine is booming as never before.

You can see it clearly in the numbers. As we'll relate in the following pages, the state's wine industry remains on a nearly two-decade surge of popularity, accounting for more than $34 billion in sales last year.

Add to that a record 2012 harvest of 4 million tons of wine grapes, a rebound from several short vintages and a sure sign of confidence in the thirst for California wine.

But numbers tell only a sliver of the story. That growth mostly reflects the state's big names. A new generation of winemakers and grape growers is rewriting the modern story of California wine - discovering new places to farm and new grapes that thrive.

The state relies on its most famous wine corners, such as the Napa Valley and Sonoma County ... but those regions are still finding ways to reinvent themselves. Less-traveled areas like Napa's Coombsville region, and lesser-known grapes like Trousseau Gris, are appealing both to longtime fans of California and to those once skeptical of its wine potential.

At the same time, there are seeds of growth in every corner of the state - even as far south as San Diego, where a band of pioneering winemakers is reinventing wine culture on the south coast.