To say that the economy of California’s Yuba County peaked during the gold rush and has been in slow decline ever since would not be much of an exaggeration. This sparsely populated area of the state has been among California’s poorest regions for decades. Yet seemingly out of the blue in 1985, it became home to one of the very first few American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) in the country, and by then already housed the single largest vineyard in the entire state. The story of the North Yuba AVA sounds like something out of a satirical novel: a famous German...