Careful with your AVAs

[tomstevenson]

An appellation is just a name. Nothing more. Unless, of course, some bureacracy or organistation wants to tie it up with a lot of dos and donts. The only point, as far as making any appellation official is to guarantee its integrity. As long as that is done then if any specific appellation eventually stands out as being special for a particular variety or style, then it will achieve a premium, but that's because the market has determined it is worth the extra, not because someone has dictated what variety should be grown. I'm not a lover of cool-climate grapes grown in hot climates, but what right has anyone to tell a grower what he can and cannot grow? And how hot's hot? If someone want to do it and all he makes is crap, then that's his look out, but I've tasted some stunning late-harvest style Riesling from areas that I wouldn't grow that grape, if it were my vineyard, and I'm thankful every time somebody bucks the system to produce something so miraculously outstanding. If a wine style rather than grape variety could be described as cool-climate, then it has to be brut-style fizz, and I not only see people using grapes from areas that are too hot, but going about it all the wrong way, yet the progress made in many of those wines over the last five years has been humbling. We all like to think we know where the best wines are made, what varieties seem to stand out in those areas, and how they should be made, but we should not impose those views, however well-founded they might be, on others. It will just stifle progress and experimentation, as indeed it is doing in France, where former Champagne producer Jean-Louis Denois has been forbidden to grow Gewurztraminer near Limoux because it is a designation in the Alsace appellation. You should learn from the mistakes of France, not try to imitate them.