(Wine-Searcher) - Sonoma County seems to have one of the most desirable lifestyles in the US: mild weather, fine restaurants, outstanding farmers' markets, and of course many miles of beautiful vineyards.

For the people who pick the wine grapes, though, the lifestyle is of sharing houses with other families, yet still paying too much rent; not having health insurance despite health problems; and struggling to make ends meet. No wonder grape pickers binge drink at three times the national rate.

Sonoma, where the economy is booming with median household income of $63,000 and a 4.7 percent unemployment rate, last month released data from an extensive study of the conditions of its farmworkers, 92 percent of whom work in vineyards. Some findings are not surprising, but as a whole they paint a vivid picture.

Median income for Sonoma farmworker families is just $24,000; 70 percent of farmworkers have no health insurance (perhaps, for some, because of their immigration status, which was not asked about). The county estimates that 92 percent of farmworker families do not earn enough to meet their families' basic needs.

The biggest change from a decade ago is that farmworkers are no longer migrants since the US tightened border controls;  88 percent consider Sonoma County their permanent residence. Some of them are legal, some are illegal, but none of the latter are risking visits home to Mexico for fear that they might not be able to return.

Among the highlights of the survey:

* 90 percent of Sonoma County farmworkers are Mexican, 5 percent are Mexican-American, 3 percent are Central American, and 2 percent are "Other"

* 91 percent are men

* 54 percent stopped going to school at the 8th grade or earlier

* 73 percent speak English "not at all" or "a little"

* 30 percent get some sort of housing support from their employer. But 67 percent live in conditions considered "overcrowded" by US standards of people per room

* 63 percent drive their own car to work; 20 percent use "raiteros," a kind of illegal farmworker group shuttle I hadn't heard of. Raiteros charge an average of 21 cents a minute, double what other ride-sharing costs

* Farmworkers drank more than three times as much soda as the average Sonoma County adult (it is hot out there) – and three times as many of them have diabetes. But their level of obesity is about the same

* The good news is that farmworkers eat almost exactly as many fruits and vegetables as the county average