The Tobacco and Trade Bureau, the latest incarnation of bureaucracy responsible for the US system of American Viticultural Areas (AVAs), is not particularly known for getting things right. That is, unless you happen to be one of its successful petitioners, having spent years (and a significant amount of cash) assembling the documentation to justify your request for a patch of ground with a governmentally sanctioned name.

Thanks to our political machinery, those petitioners are most often big wine companies with the deep pockets required to produce the various studies required by the government as part of the process. As a result, our American Viticultural Areas are often largely useless, political constructions that, like our congressional districts, say more about the people responsible for creating them than what they truly contain. Witness the recent enlargement of the Russian River Valley AVA by 14,400 acres (5,827 ha) at the behest of the Gallo family, whose vineyards dominated the newly expanded area.

California’s massive Sonoma Coast AVA has long been one of the most egregious examples of such a construction. It begins where one might expect: at the cool, fog-inundated hills overlooking the Pacific Ocean, but then sprawls lazily inland to microclimates 20 degrees hotter and soil geologies that might as well be on the other side of the country.

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