What's An Appellation?
Location...Location...Location!

  When you look at bottles of wine, most of them give an appellation, or the place where the grapes were grown. On a label that says California, you know that the grapes are grown in the appellation of California. California is then broken up into smaller appellations, or specific growing areas of wine grapes. Some of these areas, like Santa Barbara County, also have recognized wine grape growing areas called AVAs.
  AVA is short for “American Viticultural Area.” That means that the federal government examined a specific area for its soil, climate, and location, and they labeled that area because it produces a taste that anyone drinking a wine from that area would recognize. Every AVA has a signature flavor profile that, once you’re familiar with it, you can count on similar flavors in every wine produced from grapes grown in that area.
  This isn’t to say that when you pick up a bottle of Santa Maria Pinot Noir, they are all going to taste the same. However, if you taste a selection of different Pinot Noir wines from the Santa Rita Hills AVA (Sta. Rita Hills) and compare them to a selection of Pinot Noir wines from the Santa Maria Valley AVA, you will taste a definite difference in basic flavors of each AVA.
  A wine that has a specific AVA on the label must contain a minimum of 85% grapes grown within the legal boundaries of the AVA. That means that when you buy a bottle of Santa Maria Valley Chardonnay, 85% or more of the grapes that made that wine came from Santa Maria Valley.  It’s going to taste like a Santa Maria Valley Chardonnay and not like a Santa Ynez Valley Chardonnay or a French Chardonnay. The distinct and unique flavor of each AVA becomes more apparent the more you drink and compare wines from different designated AVAs.
   The three smaller officially recognized AVAs within the Santa Barbara County appellation are the Santa Maria Valley AVA, the Santa Ynez Valley AVA, and the new and highly touted Santa Rita Hills AVA, or Sta. Rita Hills AVA.
  Let’s begin with the Santa Maria Valley AVA.  This is the northernmost area of Santa Barbara County. Santa Maria is a funnel shaped valley opening onto the Pacific Ocean. This makes the growing season long and cool. There’s little rain fall as well, which is best to make the grapes struggle to gain complexity as they age on the vine. The grapes that do best there are Rhone varieties like Syrah and Viognier, and Burgundy varieties like Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. These wines are high in acid, making them food friendly, with fresh bright fruits and citrus character.
  The Santa Rita Hills AVA has a similar climate to the Santa Maria Valley with it’s openness to the Pacific Ocean breezes. However, the Santa Rita Hills AVA also gets the heat from the Santa Ynez Valley’s hot valley highs.  Its soil composition is also very rocky. All of the slight differences between the two areas make the Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Syrah from each area distinctive and unique. The Santa Rita Hills’s wines, in my humble opinion, are rich in earth flavors, and the fruit flavors are deep and ripe.
   The Santa Ynez Valley AVA is one of the only AVAs where the Pacific coastline runs east-west rather than north-south, as do both the coastal Santa Ynez Mountain range and the more interior San Rafael Mountain range which border the valley. The wines produced from the Santa Ynez Valley AVA run from the coastline to the heat of the central valley hillsides, and therefore run the gamut of variety of grapes that can be successfully produced there. The wines from Santa Ynez Valley AVA are typically medium to full-bodied wines that drink well immediately.
   To further understand what this means to you, I highly recommend wine tasting throughout the Santa Ynez Valley and then have yourself a little wine party!  Pick up a selection of bottles from each AVA in Santa Barbara County of your favorite wine that you drink most often. As you sample each wine from the different AVAs, you and your friends can write down what you taste and describe the differences in the flavors of each bottle and determine what your favorite AVA is in our beautiful Santa Barbara County.  The possibilities are endless, drink responsibly and enjoy!