California will soon be host to the world's smallest wine appellation, or legally designated wine region. The U.S. is already home to the largest appellation in the world, the ever-popular Upper Mississippi River Valley American Viticultural Area, which covers almost 30,000 square miles spread across four states, approved earlier this year by the US Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau. Maybe they're going for a Guinness Book of World Records spot?
The newly approved Happy Canyon AVA (happycanyonava.com), located inside California's Santa Ynez Valley AVA and the huge Central Coast AVA, only encompasses eight vineyards, and only six of those — Cimarone, Grassini, Vogelzang, HCV, McGinley, and Star Lane — actually make wine. Why such a fiddling little designation, when the wineries involved could easily use the Santa Ynez Valley branding? Different micro-climate, different soil and, well, Happy Canyon sounds so much nicer than Santa Ynez, doesn't it?
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2009.