San Joaquin Valley, southern half of the vast Central Valley in california, and that part of the state which produces the great bulk of its wine, and its table grapes and drying grapes. It stretches almost 300 miles/480 km from Stockton down to Bakersfield, and approaches 60 miles in width at its widest. Its great expanses of vineyard included 151,000 acres/61,000 ha of wine grapes in 2013. It is California’s Languedoc-Roussillon or Mezzogiorno, but so far only as a bottomless well of cheap, everyday wine. Except for the distinct avas of lodi and clarksburg at its very northern end near the confluence of the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, it resists any internal dividing lines because its climate and soils are so relentlessly consistent.
