List of wine regions by country

[Robin Garr]

Is there such a list available somewhere? And in the USA, would the "region" be the state or Napa, Sonoma, Finger Lakes, etc? If the latter, there must be a million of them in the USA? Well, several dozen anyway.

Probably the most accurate designation of "Region" in the US would be the AVA (American Viticultural Area) which is controlled by regulation and, in theory, is supposed to represent a unified area within which wines have a common character. [bwahahaha]

I can't look it up easily while traveling, but I'm sure there are plenty of lists online ... probably either Wine Institute or the feds would be good places to look for accurate, up-to-date lists.

you might get it. Here's a list of american viticultural areas by size - can't vouch for accuracy, but....

http://www.iwineinstitute.com/ava/avabysize.asp

I don't think it's current - but you can get some idea of the number of AVAs we're talking about.

Is there such a list available somewhere? And in the USA, would the "region" be the state or Napa, Sonoma, Finger Lakes, etc? If the latter, there must be a million of them in the USA? Well, several dozen anyway.

Probably the most accurate designation of "Region" in the US would be the AVA (American Viticultural Area) which is controlled by regulation and, in theory, is supposed to represent a unified area within which wines have a common character.

AVA requires just three things :

1) Objectively definable and known boundaries
2) Distinct geographical features
3) Recognized name


There is not even a slight assumption that the wines have common character, though #2 might imply.

The best place to learn about US AVAs is http://www.appellationamerica.com

A.

(Disclosure : I work for Cellartracker.)

You might trying looking at Cellartracker. We have been very busy lately making the data structured in the way the countries do and then locking that information. Our Australia data is solid and matches the "official" designations, for example. Austria did, but might have gotten altered since as it wasn't locked.

The problem is that the old world countries are nicely organized, but others are not. In the US, there are huge AVAs and tiny ones. Some contain other AVAs inside them. There is no official hierarchy and the concept of a region is very nebulous. We might agree that Napa and Sonoma are regions, but how about North Coast which encompasses them + Lake and Mendocino Counties? Central Coast vs Monterey? I have no idea what a wine region in the US would be.

Even Spain isn't nested like France. Do you go with political boundaries or cultural ones? You might as well just list the 40 DOs. Does the region of Catalunya really mean anything by encompassing Priorat and Penedes? I think it produces a false sense of information to do so.

In short, the idea of regions only works for a few places where the political and cultural has a long historical mapping to viticulture.

A.

Not sure what you're getting at.
Do you mean something like: USA>California, New York, Michigan? In other words, just the overall region (state?) where wine is produced? Because I think there's wine produced in just about every state in the union. If you want to drill down further, CA alone has a boatload of AVAs so you would really have your work cut out for you. But in your FR and IT examples, it seems as though you just want to hit the larger area (Burgundy, Bdx, Piedmonte) and leave it at that. If that's what you're doing, then you could probably get away with Northern CA, Central CA, Southern CA, or something to that effect. Throw in Long Island and the Finger Lakes - I know there's wine produced elsewhere but those regions would likely account for the great majority of it.

Randy: Italy has twenty designated regions for wine.

In America, you'd have to go by country/state/region/county/AVA to be consistent (realizing that some AVAs could cross boundaries, or overlay each other (sub-AVAs)

For instance: US/California/Central Coast/Monterey County/Monterey/Arroyo Seco AVA.

Even Spain isn't nested like France. Do you go with political boundaries or cultural ones? You might as well just list the 40 DOs. Does the region of Catalunya really mean anything by encompassing Priorat and Penedes? I think it produces a false sense of information to do so.

Well, if you apply that logic, Andrew (and mind you, I'm not saying it's wrong), then France doesn't make any sense either.

If Catalunya, encompassing Priorato and the Penedes, produces a false sense of information, then what in the world does the "Loire" do, encompassing Muscadet, Chinon, Bourgeuil, Touraine, Vouvray, and Sancerre? Or the Sud Ouest, for goodness sake? What a hodgepodge that is, ranked perhaps because of proximity, but certainly for little else.

I am afraid that when it comes to wine, there are so many nits to be picked, and so many wits to pick the nits that we'll none of us ever have a single consensus on nomenclature.

Anywhere wine is grown, trade groups (mercantile interests, including the growers, wine producers, real esate speculators, and politicians---who are a mercantile class of the highest order, simply tainted by hyprocisy and self-interest---will seek to twist the "rules" to their own devices. Thus chaos will come from order.

And all of us will then seek to impose a hierarchy on the chaos---to try to make sense of it all. Some people will care; others won't. And as soon as we have a relatively well understood and agreed upon hierarchy....well, someone will come along and do something that confuses it again.

US/California/Central Coast/Monterey County/Monterey/Arroyo Seco AVA.

Nah, way to anal. I'm looking for a practical way to arrange the stuff for searches, so I'm guessing the 80/20 rule could be applied. Can't we come up with a list of the appelations that cover 80% of production (or should that be sales)?

Ohhhh---you want to make it easy! You a commie, or just lazy?

Actually, it wouldn't be that difficult to do: it's natural to group into large regions that encompass smaller regions. Just do a cluster system (and no, I'd go with production rather than sales, thank you very much).

Heck, when I teach Italy (which is generally considered the most difficult and opaque-- I break the twenty regions up into about seven or eight clumps that seem to make sense (the Northern Mountain Zone as opposed to the Southern Mainland, the Islands, The Adriatic Coast, you get the drift)

If you wanted to do the same thing with Murka, it's possible (it's been done, as a matter of fact, in some books/articles). You'd inevitably piss someone off (as in, even though places like Florida and Alabama may have wineries, and may even have vineyards, that doesn't mean you have to glorify them by calling them wine regions ). Just go with the generally accepted groupings where there is a large enough wine producing area that you can designate, and let it go at that. The US is still far to chaotic and diverse and young to assign specific styles or varietal dependence upon those groupings though, so you won't be able to impose European standards on them (as in Vouvray producing Chenin Blanc, Macon producing Chardonnay and Gamay, etc.)

Just decide what your taxonomy is going to be, and do it. Some folks will agree with you and applaud. Others will disagree and hiss at you. Like your normal day, in other words.

France doesn't make any sense either.

I just took a look at what 1855.com is doing. They show 13 regions for France. Regions in the French sense are strictly geographical and a Frenchman will say I like Rhone and Languedoc or they'd speak of Alsace, Provence, Corsica, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Jura, Loire, Sud-Ouest.

Maybe my principal error here is to imagine any semblance between wine producing countries at all

Or AMONG wine producing countries, for that matter. Anytime the politicians get involved, murk happens. You're dealing with national lines here, complicated by bureaucratic subdivisions. It has to be a mess!

John Tomasso wrote:
you could probably get away with Northern CA, Central CA, Southern CA, or something to that effect. Throw in Long Island and the Finger Lakes - I know there's wine produced elsewhere but those regions would likely account for the great majority of it.


This is probably the tack I'd take. I know some wine is produced in almost all of the 50 states, but again, I'll bet 80% of wine produced in the USA comes from no more than five very general places like the areas you suggest.

Yes, John----except I think instead of five, you'd have to go with at least nine or ten. California, I believe, would have to be five all by itself: Northern CA Coastal, Central Coastal, Southern Coastal, Central Valley, Sierra Foothills.

Does Pacific Northwest make sense? (I bet Washington and Oregon would be pissed off if you lumped their disparate states together, and both might be pissed off if you lumped them in with Idaho. )

You could get away with Southwest, Midwest, Ohio Valley, Finger Lakes, Northeast Coastal, and Southern Coastal, I suppose.

And again, that's just dealing with geographic proximity as your guiding hierarchy.

(Hey, if it was easy and simple, it wouldn't be wine, right? )

You want me to whip it out? Right here?

Well, it's pretty macro....but what the hell:

Actually, the macro is easy. The top production, as rendered by state, is California, Washington, Oregon and New York. I'm at home (and unlike you I'm not a workaholic) so I don't have stats brokend down beyond that, but I can ask some questions when I get back to work.