Oregon AVAs: Effective Consumer Education Tools or Meaningless Marketing Labels?
By Cole Danehower

Do AVAs have any value for Oregon wine consumers—or are they just marketing tools for wineries trying to promote their business? Oregon may soon double the number of AVAs in the state—is this a good thing?

Well, let’s look at the case of one potential new AVA and see what we can learn.

When I say “Red Hills,” what does that mean to you as an Oregon wine consumer? Probably, it means the rolling red-dirted, vine-encrusted hill region outside the rural town of Dundee, southwest of Portland that is home to many of Oregon’s best-known wineries.

“The Red Hills of Dundee” has been a marketing slogan touting the area almost as long as there have been vines there. Consumers as far away as the East Coast have come to recognize “The Red Hills of Dundee” as an important source of prime quality Pinot noir.

Now, when I say “Red Hill” to the same Oregon wine consumer, what does that mean? If they detect the single letter shift in names—and I emphasize “if”—they will likely look at you helpfully and offer “Oh, you mean the Red Hills of Dundee . . .” If they don’t catch the subtle difference, “Red Hill” means nothing to them at all.

In actuality, “Red Hill” and “Red Hills” are two entirely different references to two entirely different Oregon wine regions. Think the average Oregon wine lover knows the difference? Of course not. Confused? Of course you are.

What Are AVAs?

American Viticultural Areas, or AVAs, are this country’s answer to the European system of giving special designation to defined geographic regions known to produce distinctive wine. In theory, AVAs—often also referred to as appellations—are designed to give the wine consumer specific useful information about the origin of the wine they have, and by extension, some hint as to its overall character.

In practice, though, AVAs are merely administrative labels that are essentially meaningless to the consumer. AVA’s in fact, tell the consumer nothing really useful about the wine. The greatest value of AVAs is as a marketing gambit by the wine industry.

Strong words? Perhaps—but I think they are essentially true.

Let’s go back to Oregon’s “Red Hill/s” nomenclature debacle to illustrate my point.

The Red Hills of Dundee constitute a definable wine growing region (characterized primarily by volcanic Jory soil and a particular mesoclimate) that for many years has been associated in the marketplace with a regional style of Pinot noir wines. Much as defined and classified regions in Burgundy produce identifiable wine styles, so over the years a few places in Oregon—the Red Hills of Dundee being primary among them—have come to produce their own distinctive wine styles.

If there was ever a “no-brainer” AVA in Oregon, it should have been the “Red Hills of Dundee.”

But there will never be a “Red Hills” AVA. The essential reason that the Red Hills of Dundee will never become an AVA is because someone else beat them to the punch—they applied first for an AVA name that was essentially the same name as the de facto, unofficial AVA, effectively precluding the recognition of the Red Hills as an appellation.

AVA’s Are Merely Administrative Labels

Despite common belief, the AVA system has nothing whatsoever to do with defining the distinctive character of wine produced within the defined AVA. All AVAs do is label a region that has definable growing conditions that can be differentiated from surrounding areas. They may be great or lousy growing conditions, but that is not important.

The reality is that AVAs are purely administrative in nature. As long as a few easily attainable requirements are met, just about any piece of ground can be granted AVA status. AVAs have nothing whatsoever to do with wine quality, character, or style.

Let’s be clear: AVAs can define specific wine growing areas that produce readily definable wine styles, but only if applicants for AVAs choose to define their proposed AVA in that way—there is nothing in the TTB regulations that requires it, however.

The idea behind many of the newly applied for Oregon AVAs is definitely to delineate geographic areas that produce distinctive wines (the Ribbon Ridge application is a good example). But just about any plot of ground can be used to apply for an AVA designation.

All that is required for an AVA to be granted is 1) that the name of the proposed area be “locally and/or nationally known,” 2) that the applicant can show “historical or current evidence” that the proposed boundaries are as specified and can be located on a USGS map, and 3) “evidence relating to the geographical features which distinguish the viticultural features of the proposed area from surrounding areas.”

That’s all there is to it. There is no requirement to demonstrate a viticultural history, nor is there anything in the rules that demands that a region even be capable of regularly growing good quality vinifera grapes.

I could legitimately apply for an AVA that encompasses 100-yards on either side of my 2.5 mile stretch of road along the Umpqua River, because I can easily meet the TTB requirements. I can show that the “Scottsburg” name is locally known, that the boundaries of the area can be easily located on a USGS map, and that the soil, elevation, and mean temperature along my road differs demonstrably from the surrounding area. But would such an AVA make any viticultural sense? It doesn’t matter—but I do have a few Pinot plants growing on my property . . .

The actual granting of an AVA application, is based on meeting the above described criteria. If they are met, about the only reason the ATF would not approve an AVA is if its name obviously conflicts with an existing name.

The application for a Red Hill AVA is an example of using the AVA designation as a marketing tool (perhaps even as a political tool), not as a consumer information tool. The fact that the Red Hill AVA encompasses but a single vineyard, the boundaries of which have no long-term viticultrual heritage, and that there is no definable “character of wine” indigenous to the region is simply not relevant to the terms of such an AVA being approved.

The fact that consumers who may purchase a bottle of Red Hill wine expecting it to have the character of wines that have traditionally come from the Red Hills area is also irrelevant.

It is sad that in a state with a dramatic marketing problem, some people should find in advantageous to introduce more marketing confusion. But AVAs can be used that way.

The Future of AVAs in Oregon

So let’s consider again the original question: do AVAs have any meaning for Oregon wine consumers? They must have meaning to someone, since a number of new ones have recently been proposed, and other applications are being considered.

In the case of the prospective Red Hill AVA, clearly it has little meaning at all for Oregon wine consumers. But the Red Hill application is perhaps an aberration. What about the other Oregon AVAs?

Oregon’s existing AVA’s describe vast swaths of territory that contain widely divergent growing and geologic areas. The Rogue Valley AVA, for instance, includes vineyards at high altitudes in the Illinois Valley as well as those at low altitudes along the Rogue River.

These early AVAs were purposefully designed to be large so as to encourage wide exploration of possible wine growing areas. But because of their success, pockets of wineries within each extisting AVA are chaffing under the burden of not having their local geography recognized in the market. Consequently, there is an effort to add new AVA’s that “refine” the existing ones into smaller regions. Wineries often believe that putting a more specifically local AVA designation on their bottles will help them better market their wines.

In general, though, this trend is a mixed bag for consumers.

If you are already knowledgeable about Oregon wines, the name “Yamhill-Carlton District” on a bottle may have significance to your buying decision. But if you are new to Oregon wines, or unfamiliar with the geography of the north Willamette Valley, the designation will tell you nothing.

Winemakers will like it (after all, they are the ones who proposed the new AVA) because they believe it gives them a way to distinguish their wines from those produced in, say, the Chehalem Mountain (proposed) AVA. But then, we’re back to an AVA being a marketing tool, with little real informational value to the consumer.

Before most such new AVAs can have any really useful value to consumers, the consumer needs to understand a great deal more about Oregon than they currently do. Walk up to a buyer of Oregon wine in, say, Boston, and ask them what the difference is between Chehalem Mountain and Yamhill-Carlton District and you will probably get shrugged shoulders.

One proposed AVA that does make real sense for the consumer is the Southern Oregon AVA. If Oregon is known for anything in wine, it is Pinot noir, and if any current Oregon wine region is widely known the world over, it is the Willamette Valley.

But Southern Oregon is where the modern Oregon wine industry started, it has a robust and growing wine industry of its own, and it grows dramatically different wines than the Willamette Valley. It has a distinct and easily definable climate and geography and consumers can immediately identify.

The designation of “Southern Oregon” on a bottle of wine immediately differentiates for consumers the wine as being different from that produced in the Willamette Valley.

While it will take a lot of educating to get consumers to understand the viticultural differences between the Yamhill-Carlton District AVA and the McMinnville AVA (if they are approved), it takes little more then a sentence or two to explain the differences between Southern Oregon (warm climate, Bordeaux -and Rhone-style varietals) and the Willamette Valley (cool climate, Burgundian-and Alsatian-style varietals).

This is what AVAs should be used for: giving the consumer a reliable indication of the character of the wine they buy, based upon the origin of the grapes. But until the AVA system itself takes viticultural integrity into account, it will be of little real value to consumers who struggle to understand the varied wines from Oregon’s varied growing areas.