FOUR NEW AVAS APPROVED IN CALIFORNIA

(TDB) - The final rulings on four new California AVAs, which were delayed by the US government shutdown, have now been approved.

The final rulings on four new California AVAs, and a small boundary change to a fifth appellation, were intended to be published on 2 October but the government shutdown prevented that happening on time. Now, with employees back at the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, we have final approval of the following:

Four new California AVAs will take effect on 1 November: Ballard Canyon, Moon Mountain District Sonoma Valley, Big Valley-Lake County, and Kelsey Bench-Lake County. The organisation also makes a change to the boundaries of the Red Hills Lake County AVA.

Three of the changes take effect within the existing Clear Lake viticultural area which itself falls in the larger North Coast AVA.

Big Valley-Lake County, located on the southern shore of Clear Lake, covers 11,000 acres, and currently has less than 10 bonded wineries and 43 commercial vineyards covering 1,800 acres. The AVA sits at 1,360 feet above sea level and is relatively flat. The Big Valley name comes from a tribe of Pomo Indians and has been used on maps and in soil surveys from the late 1800s onward. Published accounts from 1881 include comments such as: “Big Valley is the garden spot of Lake County”. (History of Napa and Lake Counties, California, Slocum, Bown & Co. Publishers).

Lying south of Big Valley, the new Kelsey Bench-Lake County AVA covers 9,100 acres and was petitioned by the Kelsey Bench Growers Committee. The region currently has one bonded winery and 27 vineyards. As relayed in the petition, the name is a combination of the “Kelsey” surname used by early settlers and “bench” to describe the region’s higher elevation terracing (1,400 -1,600 feet). There is a local town named Kelseyville but most of it falls outside of the new AVA so the final name of Kelseyville, sometimes seen in AVA promotional pieces, was not chosen by the petitioners.

The southern portion of the proposed Big Valley-Lake County overlaps the northern part of the Kelsey Bench-Lake County. In its petition to the TTB however, the two petitioning groups included letters from the two vineyard sites which would be divided between these two AVAs