What does AVA mean
03/17/2021
While wine tasting, you may have heard the term AVA, but do you know what it actually means?
AVA or American Viticultural Area, in a delimited grape-growing region with specific geographic or climatic features that distinguish it from the surrounding regions and affect how grapes are grown. There are over 250 AVAs in the United States and AVAs can be subsets of each other. For example, the Yakima Valley is an AVA and within that AVA, there are 3 sub-regions – Rattlesnake Hills AVA, Red Mountain AVA and Snipes Mountain AVA. AVA's can be large - 29,000 acres or as small as 189 acres.
To register an AVA, the growers in the area must demonstrate why a specific area deserves special recognition, some examples of these differences might be elevation and soil differences. For a wine to use the AVA name on the bottle, at least 85% of grapes used to make the wine must come from within the area boundary. AVA definitions go hand in hand with the idea of terroir and that regional differences have a large impact on finished wines.
The AVA designation on wine can be helpful for consumers to see which areas the wines are grown. Many wine lovers develop an affinity for specific AVA’s and the characteristics found in wines from that region.
Post By:
Allison VanArnam