The people who make wine in California's Mendocino County must sometimes feel like the would-be bride left at the altar. Overshadowed by their bigger-budgeted and more publicity-savvy neighbors in Napa and Sonoma counties, even the larger wineries in Mendocino have trouble getting the attention they deserve. For smaller wineries, theirs is a voice crying in the wilderness with no one listening.

When was the last time you sought out the wines of Mendocino County, or visited this beautiful land of rolling hills and steep cliffs that's just a two-hour drive north of San Francisco?

I asked myself the same question and found the answer wanting.

It had been more than 20 years since I had last visited California's "third" wine county when I went out in June to participate in the Mendocino Wine Affair, a charity wine tasting and auction held on the spectacular grounds of Fetzer Vineyards, in Hopland, arguably, Mendocino's best known winery. I had never given a lot of thought to Mendocino wines as a category. I knew they were out there, but they just weren't on my radar screen.

Short of being hit over the head by a justifiably indignant Mendocino producer, I instead spent a full day immersed in tasting dozens of wines from more than 30 Mendocino producers and underwent a major attitude adjustment. While the wines speak for themselves, talking one-on-one with the people responsible for what ends up in the bottle was equally illuminating. I came away with a heightened understanding of just what's going on in California's northernmost, important wine-producing region.

Mendocino is much more rural than Napa and Sonoma counties. Many of its winery owners are actually farmers, not doctors, lawyers, actors or dot-com entrepreneurs who just had to add a winery to their investment portfolio.

They are folks like the Frey family, who have been growing grapes in Mendocino since 1967 and established Frey Vineyards in 1980. Together with sons Matthew and Jonathan, Paul Frey makes wines from certified organic grapes with "no detectable sulfites." Whether it's Frey's grapes or his skills as a winemaker, the end result is a killer Zinfandel that belies its modest $12 price tag.

Like the Freys, the Lolonis family grows organic wines that should sell for double their asking price. Their grape-growing heritage in Mendocino's Redwood Valley goes back to 1920, but the winery was not founded until 1982 by the second generation. Together with consulting enologist Jed Steele, Winemaker Kevin Blundell crafts the wines with great results. The Lolonis Merlot ($25) should put to shame so many others who dare to call their wines by the same varietal name, and the Carignan ($14), if others could duplicate it, would make this little-known grape the next red-hot red in America.

By comparison, Dennis Fife, who opened Fife Vineyards in 1991, may be, relatively speaking, a newcomer to Mendocino. But like his more entrenched neighbors, he's making wines that will perpetuate Mendocino County's deserved position in the upper echelon of California wine geography. His Fife Vineyards Carignan ($14), with "just a little syrah" in the blend, is one of the best reds I've tasted.

Fife, like so many of the better Mendocino winegrowers, has the dual advantages of talent and terroir. He also has old vines.

He's not alone. Lolonis' carignan vines are 55 years old. Jepson Vineyards harvests colombard grapes from vines that are more than 50 years old, too.

Of course, not everything in Mendocino is old. This is a winemaking county on the move, defined by great land, the right weather and an immigration of talent and resources.

Fetzer, with its full line of well-made wines and excellent marketing support, has already gotten the nation's attention, and, to some degree, the same can be said of Parducci, which started making wine here in 1932. But few among us have tasted Lazy Creek Gewürztraminer, Bonterra Viognier, Gabrielli Rosato or McDowell Vineyards Grenache Rosé.

Whether it's ultra-premium sparkling wine from Roederer Estate, high-quality cuvées from Pacific Echo, Charbono from Pacific Star (a wine tailor-made for pasta and pizza), or "Echo" by Milone, a proprietary red so Bordeaux-like that an unknowing taster could assume it was, indeed, French, Mendocino County offers a breadth of wine types and styles.

Despite its northern latitude, Mendocino's diverse microclimates offer hospitable conditions for a range of varieties - from cool-climate pinot noir to heat-loving cabernet.

Mendocino's bucolic lifestyle (in extreme contrast to the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Napa Valley) and winegrowing potential have spurred an infusion of talent and investment. Yet Mendocino isn't poised to be a great winemaking region. It already is a great winemaking region.

Senior Editor Bob Hosmon is the associate dean of the School of Communication at the University of Miami and the wine writer for the Sun-Sentinel.