Mount St. Helens American Viticultural Area achieves ‘pending’ status by the Tax and Trade Bureau, bringing Southwest Washington winegrape growers and vintners one step closer to recognizing the region as a bona fide AVA.
Vancouver, WA — Southwest Washington Winery Association (SWWA) received notification recently that their petition to establish an American Viticultural Area (AVA) has met the regulatory requirements as set forth by the Department of the Treasury-Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB).
In a letter to Roger Rezabek, Chair of the Southwest Washington AVA Task Force, Karen Thornton, the AVA Program Manager, Regulations and Rulings Division, stated “We have determined that the petition is perfected,” which means that it meets regulatory requirements for AVA petitions as set forth in 27 CFR part 9. Thornton further determined that, at this stage, the petition contains sufficient supporting information for TTB to proceed with rulemaking for the proposed AVA.
The Mount St. Helens AVA petition has now been listed on the official TTB website for “pending AVA petitions” (TTB.GOV). Due to a backlog of pending petitions, Thornton says it could take another year or longer to complete the rulemaking process, followed by a 60-day comment period. There are approximately 140 acres of wine grapes that are currently grown in southwest Washington and 30 licensed wineries.
An AVA is an American Viticultural Area in the United States that the federal government officially recognizes as a specific area that has unique characteristics for growing wine grapes. Washington State currently has 20 AVAs.
The name for the new designated area is Mount St. Helens AVA. The mountain is a geologic presence that is visible from many vantage points and vineyards in southwest Washington. The new AVA will extend from the southwest corner of Skamania County, near Beacon Rock State Park, all the way to Centralia, Washington in areas up to 1200 feet elevation. In addition to a small section of western Skamania County, the proposed AVA will include parts of Clark, Cowlitz, and Lewis Counties. It will abut the Willamette Valley AVA at the Columbia River, and the Puget Sound AVA along the Lewis-Thurston County line.
“At over 2,100 square miles the Mount St. Helens AVA would be the third largest in the state after Columbia Valley and Puget Sound,” says Roger Rezabek, co-owner of Rezabek Vineyards in Battle Ground, Wash.
The drafting of the initial petition took several years, and involved a lot of research and data gathering, according to Rezabek. SWWA submitted the original petition to TTB in August, 2022, and clarification revisions took another year, with Rezabek and Tom Aspitarte of Martha’s Vineyard of Skamania County primarily involved in making the revisions. TTB accepted the final revisions in late September 2023.
Washington State is the second largest producer of wine in the country, with over 1,050 wineries and more than 60,000 acres of vineyards, according to the Washington Wine Commission. They report that the economic impact of the State Wine industry is over $8 Billion.
Southwest Washington played an historical role in the establishment of Washington’s wine industry, dating back to 1825 when the first grapes were planted in the area at Fort Vancouver by the Hudson’s Bay Company. The company also provided cuttings to grape growers throughout the Northwest for many years.
An American Viticultural Area would give long deserved recognition to this region. Pinot Noir is the most popular grape in the area, however vineyards are growing more than 20 other varieties, including lesser-known types such as Golubok, Marechal Foch, Zweigelt, Pinot Blanc and Muscat to name a few.