Grape Recognition: Santa Barbara County Gains 7th Wine AVA

9/1/20: Santa Barbara vintners are celebrating the feds’ decision last week to greenlight the county’s newest AVA, Alisos Canyon.

AVA stands for American Viticultural Area and refers to a region recognized by the federal government for its unique ability to grow quality wine grapes. The distinction denotes pedigree and signals that site-specific factors, such as climate and soils, converge to create a special winegrowing destination. It also allows wine producers who may have used more broad identifiers on their labels in the past – phrases like “Santa Barbara County” or “Santa Ynez Valley” – to more specifically showcase that their wines come from “Alisos Canyon.”

Martian Ranch Vineyard is inside the new Alisos Canyon AVA

This new AVA covers 5774 acres nestled in the Los Alamos Valley, roughly between the Santa Ynez and Santa Maria Valleys. Here, a steady influx of marine air and fog create some of the greatest variation in daytime and nighttime temps on California’s Central Coast, and the soils are primarily weathered sandstone and shale. Well-known vineyards like Dovecote (formerly Thompson), Martian Ranch and Watch Hill call Alisos Canyon home.

Winemaker Wes Hagen, brand ambassador for the Miller Family Wine Co. and the primary petitioner for the new AVA, calls Alisos Canyon a “Goldilocks Rhone Zone” that’s ideal for growing Rhone grapes – reds like syrah and grenache and whites like viognier and roussanne. “They are all going o be fantastic here,” he said in a video release following last week’s AVA announcement, “along with cabernet franc.”

One other topographical feature that makes Alisos Canyon stand out is the fact it’s at end of a 24.5-mile watershed, the San Antonio Creek basin, that stretches out toward the Pacific. Two other watersheds – the Santa Maria River, which leads to the renowned Bien Nacido Vineyard, and the Santa Ynez River, which leads to Ballard Canyon – are equally distant from the shore. “How cool that exactly 24-1/2 miles down these regions we have these beautiful places for growing Rhone varietal wines,” Mr. Hagen adds.

If a new AVA is a boon for vintners who can now highlight a special growing region, it’s an asset for consumers, too. Anyone looking for world-class syrahs or viogniers can now seek out the “Alisos Canyon” nomenclature on a wine label and, by extension, make a more informed purchase.

Alisos Canyon is Santa Barbara County’s 7^th AVA, following Santa Maria Valley (established in 1981), Sanat Ynez Valley (1983), Sta. Rita Hills (2001), Happy Canyon (2009), Ballard Canyon (2013) and Los Olivos District (2016).

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