Geography and the American Viticultural Areas Process, Including a Case Study of Lodi, California

The United States has a legal system for the formal designation of wine appellations of origin overseen by the Department of the Treasury. By regulating the labeling of wine to ascertain the area of origin of the wine for the consumer, the Department’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau controls place names that can be used on wine labels and, indirectly then, throughout the wine trade. Approved places are known as American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) and are established (or rejected) through a formal public petition, review, comment, and sometimes, a hearing process. The geographical distinctiveness of the place drives its approval as a formal AVA. This is primarily based on physical geographic criteria such as climate, topography, soils, and geology, and also on a function of place history and name as cultural elements of the landscape. Geographers are well engaged in the AVA establishment process and through this, contribute to the education of winegrowers, the trade, the government, and the public on place-based distinctiveness of wines. Over 200 AVAs have been established in the United States since the rule-making process began in 1978, with over 100 of these AVAs in the State of California. Over the last 30 years, the federal agency has become stricter in following its criteria to delimit geographically distinctive areas with historical name recognition, less sympathetic to letting in wine-growers outside the proposed AVA boundaries without cause, and more systematic in how AVAs nest within one another. The best examples of the AVA establishment process now are also about building a sense of community and place through contestation and discourse and the give and take that shapes a community of place. The petition to divide the large Lodi, California American Viticultural Area into seven distinct AVAs is outlined as a case study in this process, where winegrowers and many other community members came together to support the establishment of finer-scale AVAs with the large Lodi AVA.