The North Coast AVA

As often happens in the blogging business, you start out with one topic in mind only to be overtaken by something else that commands your attention.  This time we started with Dough Wines of St. Helena, California which have been a popular item here at the store.  The variety currently in stock is their North Coast Sauvignon Blanc which, if you go to doughwines.com, they advertise on the same page as their Napa Sauv Blanc at twice the price.  So the question looms - Is the Napa appellation wine really twice as good as the North Coast?

Before moving on from Dough, since we are so critical of winery websites, we should commend them for a wonderful site.  Without romanticizing or fictionalizing their story like so many sites, they just say what they are about and it seems to be as much about food as about wine.  The site is tastefully done if that doesn't sound too punny.  

The Dough winemaker says the juice for their North Coast Sauv Blanc comes from two vineyards; one a warmer locale, the other, distinctly cooler.  The fruit from the warmer is more tropical; the cooler one, crisper with an acidic structure.  Blending them together results in a "lively and refreshing, gooseberry/tropical" quaff.  

And that brings us more to the point - North Coast appellation wines are often blends from disparate places created by big business wineries requiring huge volumes to maintain their mass market shelf space.  Such wines are not vying for best-of-kind status.  They are making a commodity for the marketplace, wine that meets a respectable quality standard for the North Coast appellation.

The North Coast AVA (American Viticultural Area) is huge...as in three million acres huge!  It includes all of Napa, Sonoma, Mendocino and Lake Counties and parts of Solano and Marin Counties. It's shape is a diagonal rectangle measuring a hundred twenty miles north to south and fifty miles inland.  Any further into the interior and the climate is considerably hotter.  Its proximity to the ocean provides the cooling fog and breezes that define its existence.

More than half of all California wineries are located in the North Coast AVA.  Half of all functioning organic wineries are located there.  Fifty-four smaller AVAs are located within the North Coast AVA.  The Russian River Valley, Oakville, Alexander Valley are brand names in themselves but they could just identify themselves by the North Coast appellation.  But it is always an indicator of quality for a wine label to narrow down their location.  We know the three AVAs above are Napa/Sonoma locales.  Benmore Valley, Yorkville Highlands and Suisun Valley are three from elsewhere in North Coast.  Could they be comparable to Napa/Sonoma?