Are There Too Many Appellations?

Per the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, or TTB, there are 269 Appellations, American Viticultural Areas/AVAs, official wine growing regions, or whatever you want to call them. About half are in California, where close to 90% of the country's wine comes from. How many AVAs are too many? 300? 400? 150?

You have to wonder who all of these small, mostly unknown growing areas are for? Sometimes I think they're more for the grape growers and winemakers who probably believe they can charge more for something that seems exclusive.

 

Click on map to enlarge
image from napavalleypassport.com

 

Background

Up until 1980 the only region listed on an American wine label was geographic. Examples are Napa County and California. Things got more specific, and that was a good thing, when the government allowed anyone to petition them for a new, named AVA.

There are big ones like North Coast consisting of Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino, and Lake Counties that have some wildly different soils and climates. There's the 150 acre Cole Ranch AVA in Mendocino with 60 acres planted to grapes and no wineries.

Plenty of new AVAs are coming along, as the TTB seems to approve a new request every month or two. I wonder how many they've turned down?

Questions/Problems

Are AVAs there to catalog recognized and distinct grape growing areas, or are they a blank sheet to invent one? Should they have some sort of historical significance, or are they mostly a marketing tool?

In the map above of smaller AVAs in Napa Valley, how many have you heard of? More importantly, how many do you recognize the differences in the wines? That is, would you know the difference in an Oakville or Rutherford Cabernet? Yeah, a very small number of people would know this, but this is what AVAs are supposed to be about.

I somewhat understand the difference in the wines from most AVAs in Sonoma County and less so in Napa, but that's because I live here and drink local wines, so I've learned over time. If you live elsewhere, you have no reason to know this level of detail. 

Not picking on just Napa as Sonoma County has Pine Mountain, Fountaingrove, and other small ones that mean nothing to most wine buyers. Stay tuned because the Sebastopol Hills sub-AVA of the Russian River Valley AVA of Sonoma County is coming soon!

Maybe someone thought, or hoped, these sub-regions would carry the same significance as Saint Emilion or Haut-Medoc in Bordeaux.