How to build an AVA
As you read this, I’ll be on my way up to the Willamette Valley. Some of you may recall that I’m working on crafting a new American Viticultural Area for a region in which Jackson Family Wines has a vineyard. It’s in the central-western part of the Valley; as you can see, the current sub-AVAs are all in the northern part.
The area I’m interested in is just south of McMinnville and Eola-Amity Hills, so if we get approval, it will represent a steady and logical expansion southward of AVAs in Willamette Valley.
It’s been a very interesting and thoughtful process so far, so I figured it might be of interest to you, too, to see some of the stuff I’ve been dealing with. There are two main factors to consider in getting the Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) of the U.S. Treasury Department to approve a new AVA. You need a name, and you need to establish boundaries. Both can be challenging: the TTB is very rigorous, especially about the name, and my feeling is that they’ve been getting tougher over the years. Another way of putting that is that, in my estimation, they’ve approved AVAs in the past that they would not approve today.
I decided to start with the name. TTB has two over-arching requirements for a name: It has to have some documented usage in local history, and it has to have current and direct usage today. Of course, there are other parameters, but those are the big two.
One of the early lessons I learned was from another group that spent a considerable amount of time and effort to establish a new AVA whose name they more or less invented, willy-nilly, because it sounded nice. TTB said no, because the name had no roots in history. It was a big disappointment for the petitioners, and I certainly didn’t (and don’t) want to spend a bunch of time applying for something that has no chance of being approved.
We also wanted to make sure, as much as possible, that all the local growers, winemakers and other stakeholders were onboard with the name. It’s a simple matter of respect, unity and, yes, love: Love thy neighbor. In fact, my meeting today will, I hope, conclude the naming part of the deal. Then we have to begin the arduous process of delineating boundaries. We have to show that the entire proposed AVA shares a common terroir, inclusive of both soils and climate. This will require the pooling of a great deal of information, which would be difficult if not impossible if all our neighbor stakeholders weren’t part of the process.
So far everything has gone exceptionally smoothly, but I’m taking nothing for granted. I’m a big believer in Murphy’s Law, which can be mitigated to some extent through careful preparation, although it can’t be entirely eliminated, especially given when you’re dealing with a gigantic federal bureaucracy. I know something about the history of many of our California AVAs, because I reported on them at the time. There were so many unnecessary battles, so many needless delays, so much antagonism stirred up between discordant stakeholders, all because the crafters didn’t take the time to dot all their i’s and cross their t’s. I hope I’ve learned from that.
Why is it even important to further sub-appellate Willamette Valley? For the same reason we always have needed to refine the biggest appellations: to better understand them. Napa Valley has done a great job at sub-appellating itself. Sonoma County did it a little less coherently, but still, it works, although I’ve been asking for years for Russian River Valley to be sub-divided. More lately, we’ve seen in Paso Robles and Lodi how the imperative towards sub-AVAs is irresistible. France, of course, is the inspiration. This is good for the consumer, it’s good for producers, it’s good for everyone.
