Wines from California’s Mendocino County are hardly unknown. Yet, a recent weekday trip to this county, located along the rugged North Coast some 100 miles from San Francisco, revealed an appellation that looked and felt more authentic than the more fashionable and commercialized vineyards in the adjoining counties of Napa and Sonoma. My visit came a couple of weeks after harvest, when the leaves of vines were exploding in fall colors. Admittedly, it may have been shoulder season, but I never once saw the tour buses that clutter roadways in other wine regions. At times, everything was so quiet that I had what felt like the whole county to myself. While the entirety of Mendocino County is an American Viticultural Area-designated appellation, the large and often remote county, which includes the magnificent coastal redwoods, consists of several smaller and more geographically specific appellations, each with an AVA designation. Of the …