World of Wine | What’s an AVA?

What’s an AVA?

BY MIRA HONEYCUTT

When you visit ?a winery or a tasting room, you often hear the word AVA. So, what’s an AVA

?A merican Viticultural Area (AVA) is a designated wine grape-growing region in the U.S. with specific geographic or climatic features that distinguish it from other surrounding regions. These boundaries are defined by the U.S. Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). The name of the AVA is featured on every wine bottle, along with the winery name, the grape variety, and alcohol content.

These AVA designations allow vintners to attribute a given quality, reputation, or other characteristics of a wine made from grapes grown in an area specific to its geographic origin.

If a wine is designated with the name of an American Viticultural Area, regulations require that 85 percent or more of the wine is derived from grapes grown within the boundaries of that TTB-established AVA and that the wine is fully finished within the state or one of the states in which the AVA is located.

Certain states have stricter standards for use of the name of an AVA on wine labels, such as California, which requires 100 percent of grapes used to produce the wine to come from the Golden State and the wines to be produced there. awarded to Augusta, Missouri, there are now 266 established AVAs in the U.S., with 146 in California. There can be smaller sub-AVAs within a larger AVA. For example, Paso Robles AVA, which is within the larger San Luis Obispo County, is sub-divided into 11 smaller appellations within its region.

A Paso Robles vintner can choose to imprint the bottle label with Paso Robles AVA only and add a sub-appellation if grapes are produced from that appellation. Wine bottles bearing the San Luis Obispo County AVA imprint will have grapes sourced from all over the county, and bottle labels bearing the Central Coast AVA will contain wine produced from grapes sourced from all over the Central Coast region.

The largest in California, the Central Coast AVA, stretches from Santa Barbara County in the south to the San Francisco Bay Area in the north, which includes counties of Monterey, San Luis Obispo, San Benito, and Santa Cruz. The bestknown AVA in the U.S., Napa Valley, a region with worldwide recognition, produces just 4 percent of California’s grape harvest. Napa Valley was the first to receive its AVA status in California in 1981 and second in the U.S., after Augusta, Missouri.

It’s a lengthy process to get an AVA approval from TTB. Besides geography, climate, history, and image come into play when establishing an AVA. Applicants must provide evidence that growing conditions such s soil and climate are distinctive to that particular region. A recent addition to Central Coast’s vast AVA is the SLO (San Luis Obispo) Coast AVA which received its AVA status in March 2022 after a long five-year process that began in 2017. A group of some 32 wineries, known as the SLO Coast Wine Collective producing wine within the area, began its application process for the SLO Coast AVA, making a case for the designation based on the area’s unique geography, geology, and topography — and in particular, its proximity to the Pacific Ocean.

What makes SLO Coast unique is its chilly coastal wind and the fog that gets channeled throughout the AVA. Included in this newly established AVA now are the two previously established neighboring Edna Valley and Arroyo Grande AVAs.

SLO Coast AVA’s narrow 60-mile strip hugging the coastline from San Simeon in the north to Nipomo in the south is at most only 15 miles wide. The region’s 4,000 acres of grapevines are planted along the coastal benchlands, hillsides, and valleys between the Pacific and the western slope of the Santa Lucia Mountains.

Considered the coolest-climate region in California, SLO Coast AVA is renowned for producing outstanding pinot noir and chardonnay as well as albariño, grüner veltliner, and riesling.

The 266 AVAs in the U.S. spread through 34 states reach far and wide. Established in 1995, the Puget Sound AVA in Washington State touches the Canadian border, making it the northernmost AVA located in the U.S., with Texas Hill Country the southernmost AVA established in 1991.

Martha’s Vineyard (and Chappaquiddick Island) AVA, established in 1985, touches the easternmost border while the Upper Mississippi River Valley stretches across four states — Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois, making it the largest AVA in the U.S. 

ALASKAN ADVENTURES

Keeping the Wild in the Wilderness

BY CHUCK GRAHAM

They could’ve been small patches of snow, remnants of an Arctic winter clinging to the North Slope of the Brooks Range in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Northeast Alaska (ANWR).

Instead, it was a herd of 18 Dall sheep, megafauna teeming in North America’s largest wildlife refuge at 19.3 million acres. Rafting along the serpentine flow of the Kongakut River, I scanned the sweeping topography with my binoculars for the snow-white herbivores. Browsing on a daunting mountain face smothered in peat, permafrost, hillocks, and tundra wildflowers, the Dall sheep, nimbly traversed up into a lichen-covered limestone cathedral towering above the braided Kongakut.

After tracking that herd for two miles, I finally found myself approximately 100 feet across from the Dall sheep on my own limestone perch. However, I wasn’t alone. Apparently, I had overstepped my bounds, and two Arctic ground squirrels were letting me hear about it. They defiantly chirped at me, scuffed at the loose scree surrounding my perch, and then they vanished within their burrows throughout the limestone.

Rivers on the North Slope of the Brooks Range flow northward into the vast Coastal Plain, fortified by gritty barrier islands, the icy Beaufort Sea, and the Arctic Ocean. The Coastal Plain spans 1.5 million acres and is the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd. The herd is 130,000-plus strong, breeds in Western Canada, and migrates into ANWR to calve. The migration route of the Porcupine caribou herd is the longest of any terrestrial mammal on the planet.

The refuge possesses 250 bird species, and the Coastal Plain is vital habitat for thousands of nesting shorebirds like rednecked phalaropes, least terns, and dunlin. During harsh Arctic winters ANWR provides important denning sites for polar bears. Among the 43 species of mammals, musk ox, gray wolves, grizzly bears, Arctic and red foxes, and wolverines also thrive in the refuge.

In the Crosshairs

The refuge is also the native lands of the Inupiat in the north and the Gwich’in in the southeast. Native Americans have subsisted in the Arctic for thousands of years, long before it was deemed a wildlife refuge in 1960.

Since 1977, the ANWR has been on a political roller coaster, dodging advances by oil and gas companies eager to tap into its potential oil reserves. Estimates range from 7.7 to 11.8 billion barrels of oil beneath the permafrost on the Coastal Plain, also known as the “1002 Area.” Due to political pressure, the Coastal Plain was left unprotected when the refuge was created. Since 1986, Congress has introduced bills to protect the fragile expanse of the Coastal Plain.

The Coastal Plain encompasses much of the Porcupine caribou calving grounds. That migratory caribou herd is named after their birthing grounds along the winding Porcupine River, which runs through a large swath of the range of the Porcupine caribou herd. If oil exploration took place on the Coastal Plain, it would disrupt that migratory route and the calving grounds the Porcupine caribou herd relies on.

Under the Trump Administration, a provision in the 2017 federal tax bill made oil and gas exploration in ANWR the law, but as law requires, leases went up for bid on January 6, 2020. Those bids fell far short of their financial mark of $900 million. About half the region received no offers at all, and not one major oil company submitted a bid. Only two smaller companies each secured a lease totaling $14 million. Many Alaskan politicians argue drilling would be good for jobs, the economy, and state revenue.

However, on his very first day in office, President Joe Biden put a temporary halt to oil and gas drilling in the roadless expanse of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Northeast Alaska.

“NRDC, alongside critical partners among Indigenous peoples and conservation groups, has drawn a line with the Arctic Refuge, and the Biden-Harris Administration understands the stakes,” said Garrett Rose, staff attorney with Natural Resources Defense Council’s Alaska Project. “This is America’s last, best place. If we can’t safeguard the Refuge from extractive industry, then no place in America is safe.”

Currently, the two small oil companies that did secure leases on the Coastal Plain, Regenerate Alaska, a subsidiary of Australiabased 88 Energy, and Knik Arm Services, a small Alaska company managed by an investor named Mark Graber, have rolled back their efforts to move forward with oil exploration. The costs of building roads, helipads, and other infrastructure on the Coastal Plain has u

Concealed in the willows and 150 yards downwind of sleepy Ursus, there was a moment of utter calm across the tundra. Suddenly, without warning, the grizzly awoke, trudging northward, its search for food continuing into the next river veld.

apparently far outweighed the means. For now, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is safe.

“It is so important that our young people see that we are heard and that the president acknowledges our voices, our human rights, and our identity,” Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, said in a statement.

Biodiversity Abounds

Rafting downriver but into a stiff northerly headwind, we paralleled a large, blonde male grizzly bear along the Kongakut. Its head down and into the wind, the big boar sauntered along the foothills of the Brooks Range, foraging for food. It traveled toward the Coastal Plain, still 15 miles away, but to satiate its voracious appetite and make it to hibernation, its quest continued during those long summer days in the far north.

I exited the raft and kept pace with the grizzly while running along the cobble. I stayed downwind of Ursus arctos horriblis, the apex predator of the ANWR. Once that bear crested a rolling ridge a half mile further and disappeared, I let it go as it continued northward.

Back in the raft, we paddled a couple miles further downriver. After locating a decent campsite, I kept my binoculars on me while I pitched my tent. Anticipating the bear continuing its foraging northward, I scanned for it after each tent stake was pounded into the tundra. Sure enough, the 800-pound grizzly found a place to bed down well within sight of my optics.

After pitching my tent, I was on foot bushwhacking through willows and permafrost, working my way downwind and south of the slumbering grizzly. Light rain fell as dark clouds swirled above the high peaks of the Brooks Range. Soddened by the rain, the grizzly occasionally rolled, yawned, and stretched its legs on its spongy bed of peat moss.

Concealed in the willows and 150 yards downwind of sleepy Ursus, there was a moment of utter calm across the tundra. Suddenly, without warning, the grizzly awoke, trudging northward, its search for food continuing into the next river veld. As I watched the grizzly forage away from me on the immediate horizon, the enormity of the ANWR made it appear small, this phenomenal Arctic biome the largest, last, great wild place of the Last Frontier. 