Merry Edwards’ day job is president of the Meredith Vineyard Estate, where she makes wine from pinot noir grapes. But away from her barrels and bottles, she has spent a good deal of time trying to figure out just where it is, viticulturally speaking, that she works.
Edwards plies her trade in the Russian River Valley, 150 square miles of farmland, vineyards and towns between Santa Rosa and Healdsburg in northern Sonoma County.
But the Russian River Valley is also the name of an AVA, short for American Viticultural Area. And increasingly, the AVA designation is more important–and potentially more profitable–than a mere location in a region like Sonoma once was, so wineries are working to make these designations more meaningful.
An AVA is a specific grape-growing region whose boundaries are based on geographical features, climate and historical precedent. Since 1983, about 130 AVAs, most in California, have been established by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Treasury Department agency that controls wine labeling.
The model for the AVAs is the appellation system used in European wine countries to control quality. But the U.S. version has flaws of its very own.
Build your own AVA
Growers and wineries determine the boundaries of the areas and petition the bureau for recognition. In approving an AVA, the agency always notes that it is not in any way “approving or endorsing the quality of the wines produced in this area.”
Some AVAs are not much bigger than a golf course, others are ridiculously large, like the Arkansas Mountain AVA, which takes in some 2.8 million acres, or the Puget Sound AVA, which encompasses about 5.5 million acres, much of it better suited to salmon than sauvignon. Some are more hype than reality: the San Francisco Bay AVA, for example, includes downtown San Francisco.
The Russian River Valley was among the first group of AVAs to be recognized, in 1983. One of its creators was Louis Foppiano, of Foppiano Vineyards, who has acknowledged that political considerations were almost as important as viticultural features in drawing up the AVA’s boundaries 20 years ago.
By the early 1990s it was evident that the Russian River Valley was gaining worldwide recognition for its pinot noirs. It was also clear to local growers and winemakers that the best pinot noirs came from the cooler, western half of the region; they are higher in acid than those made from grapes from the vineyards in the east. In fact, on its eastern and northern flanks, the Russian River AVA overlaps with the Chalk Hill and Alexander Valley ones, both better known for cabernet sauvignon.
“We knew we had to define ourselves more clearly,” Edwards said. “We had to put some credibility in our appellation.”
Revising a river valley
The proposed revision of the Russian River Valley Viticultural Area, in which Edwards is involved, is still before the bureau. The petition says in part: “The single most important factor that differentiates the Russian River Valley is coastal cool fog. Local experts have mapped the historic pattern of this fog for over 30 years. That pattern provides the basis for this petition which shall result, if approved, in a smaller, more reliable AVA.”
Change will not come quietly. An AVA designation on a wine label is an asset and, if the proposed revisions are approved, some wineries will lose that asset. Briefly: New AVAs in the works will cover them.
Are the demarcations a legitimate tool in improving the quality of wine and in making it easier for the consumer to purchase fine wine? Those are goals toward which winemakers like Edwards are striving. But too many AVAs are simply marketing tools. The idea that the various wines made in an area the size of Massachusetts might have anything in common is nonsensical.
The French system of appellations, and the Italian and Spanish systems as well, use the term “controlled appellations.” They determine the type of grapes that can be grown and the amount of wine that can be made from them.
They set the date of the harvest; they permit or ban irrigation, rule on the adding of sugar during fermentation and on the use of mechanical pickers in the vineyards. They set minimums for alcoholic content and determine how long the wine must be aged. Some areas demand that all wines be submitted to tasting panels in order to be eligible to use the appellation name.
The risks of such bureaucracies include fraud, favoritism and complacency, but they attempt to take into account more than geography.
Weak spots in the AVA
In the American system, such as it is, there are no rules except for a requirement that 85 percent of the wine in a bottle using the AVA name must come from that area. Also, in the case of varietal wines–wines using the name of the grape–75 percent of the named variety in a bottle must come from the named region.
But there are no controls over quantities, levels of alcohol or anything else. Growers can plant any grape varieties they choose, pick when they want to and make whatever style of wine they fancy.
Clearly, the AVA system is in transition. In “The Wine Atlas of California and the Pacific Northwest,” Bob Thompson writes that the system “is, in every sense of the word, rudimentary.” But he adds, “it has already begun to drive both producers and consumers to observe the boundaries it has established.”
Prices certainly show this: Wines from prestigious sub-regions within the Napa Valley AVA, like Carneros, Stags Leap, Rutherford and Howell Mountain, command prices up to 50 percent higher than wines bearing only the Napa Valley designation.
And some winemakers have already moved beyond the appellation system. Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars is in the Stags Leap sub-AVA, but the owner, Warren Winiarski, uses no AVA designation on his best wines, preferring names that indicate the wines are made of grapes from his own estate: Fay Vineyard, Cask 23 and SLV.
