Drawing the Line

The Russian River Valley is shrinking. Not the land itself, of course; geologists say that’s actually growing by as much as a few inches every hundred years or so. What’s getting smaller is the Russian River Valley American Viticultural Area.

The Russian River Valley Winegrowers Assn. is about to ask the government to redraw the original 1983 boundaries of the area to better reflect the climatic conditions that give Russian River Valley wines their distinctive combination of intense flavor and crisp acidity.

“We see an opportunity for the wine community to clarify for the consumer what they can expect from an appellation,” says Robin Odin, association committee chair.

This is unusual, to say the least. Nothing like it has happened in the 20-year history of the viticultural area system. In making the area smaller, the proposed revision could exclude some vineyards and wineries, which would then lose the right to sell their grapes and wines under the Russian River Valley designation.

To put it simply, a viticultural area is a legally defined vineyard region. There are 137 in the United States, 81 of them in California. The theory behind the system is simple: The characteristics of a wine derive primarily from grapes, which express the soil and climate of the place they’re grown. Therefore, the name of a grape-growing region should tell the consumer something about the flavor of wine in the bottle.

That’s how it works in France, where the appellation-of-origin concept was formalized early this century. For example, the word Chablis on a French wine label means that the wine is a dry Chardonnay from a legally defined area in eastern France with Kimmeridgian limestone subsoil. It also means that the way the grapes were grown and how the wine was made were closely regulated and that the wine had to meet certain laboratory and taste standards.

The American system doesn’t go quite that far, at least not yet. It is inspired by the French model, but it doesn’t imitate it. For one thing, it’s not nearly so regulation-heavy. The only concrete information the consumer can glean from a name such as Russian River Valley, Napa Valley, Carneros or Sonoma Mountain on a wine label is that at least 85% of the grapes were grown within the boundaries of the viticultural area.

Another difference is that boundaries are created by wine producers, not by the government. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms merely recognizes and formalizes a viticultural area after receiving a petition demonstrating that the proposed area meets basic geographical and historical requirements. The details are worked out by the petitioners.

Like all good systems, this one is evolving. The potential downsizing of the Russian River Valley area is significant in that context. “This is a coming of age of the [Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] system,” says Odin, who is also communications director for J. Wine Co. “When the Russian River Valley AVA was created, the BATF was a young entity and the local wine industry was still in its youth. Fewer people understood the merits of planting certain varieties in certain places because of climate and soil.”

The area’s original lines, she says, were loosely drawn using roads and political boundaries. The new lines will be drawn strictly according to the climate that distinguishes the region. “This will result in a smaller net acreage, but it will be more meaningful,” says Odin.

The Russian River Valley viticultural area encompasses about 150 square miles of west-central Sonoma County. It is a bucolic region of rolling hills, redwood forests and apple orchards. Wine grapes, especially Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, thrive there.

The river has played a major role in creating an ideal vineyard landscape. Its repeated flooding over millions of years has transported, mixed, sorted and deposited a wide variety of soil components along its length, including uplifted marine sediments and volcanic material. Structurally, the terraces or “benches” created by its meandering are prime vineyard locations because they are well-drained and exposed to the sun.

The Russian River plays another important part too. Although the melange of soils can be found along its entire course through Mendocino County and Alexander Valley, it is the climate of the lower valley that unites the diverse ground into a distinct grape-growing region. The river set that up long ago by cutting its channel west through the coast ranges so that the Pacific Ocean’s cooling influence extends well inland. Not incidentally, this influence is felt as far inland as the Napa Valley, where it has a significant effect on the character of Calistoga-area wines.

The vehicle of that effect is fog. It blankets the area morning and evening throughout the dog days of summer, keeping the vines refreshed so that the grapes and resulting wines maintain crisp acidity.

Fog connoisseurs--a breed that’s practically indigenous to Northern California--distinguish between two types of the wet, gray stuff. The heavy marine fog is a more or less permanent fixture just offshore, occasionally slopping over the coastline but never straying far from the frigid sea that produces it.

The lighter, more mobile coastal fog is an extension of the marine layer. It rolls in and burns back on an almost daily cycle through the summer, tempering a climate that would otherwise be better for chile peppers than for Chardonnay. It seldom rises above 900 feet, which effectively puts vineyards above the fog line in a climate entirely different from those on the valley floor. Those higher vineyards will probably be excluded from the proposed reconfiguration.

The fog zone was first mapped in the 1970s by Robert Sisson, at that time the Sonoma County farm advisor for the UC Cooperative Extension. Sisson’s fog map has been refined, using new climatic information gathered by the committee from computerized weather stations throughout the region. The refined fog map is the basis of the committee proposal.

The Russian River viticultural area contains two smaller ones positioned like bookends at the east and west sides. The Green Valley area might be considered the heart of Russian River Valley. Its climate is a distilled essence of the Russian River Valley’s cooler side, and modern premium-quality viticulture, particularly of Chardonnay, can be traced back three decades to Green Valley grower Warren Dutton’s planting in 1967.

The Chalk Hill viticultural area, on the other hand, is higher and warmer than the valley proper and has its own distinctive soil (which is not actually chalk but a pale compressed volcanic ash). For those reasons, the new area boundaries will probably exclude much of it.

Vintners and growers in Chalk Hill and growers above the fog line may have reason to complain. According to committee chair Odin, there has not been any opposition from members of the Russian River Valley wine community thus far, but the all-important public hearing phase of the approval process lies ahead, and that could be where the other shoe drops.

During the notorious Stag’s Leap District hearings in 1988, debate over where to draw the lines became so bitter and acrimonious that long-standing friendships were ruined.

Hearings on this proposal, says Odin, will probably take place early next year. Stay tuned.