California Wine producer groups and associations are a valuable source of visitor information for the California wine regions and individual wineries. When a California winery wants to tell you the geographic pedigree of its wine, it uses a tag on its label called an Appellation of Origin. This tag must meet federal and state legal requirements. A lot of people believe that the term appellation of origin is synonymous with viticultural area, but that's not the case.
Viticultural areas are to appellations like grapes are to fruit. Viticultural areas are one kind of appellation. Not all appellations are viticultural areas. An appellation of origin can be the name of a country, the name of a state or states, the name of a county or counties within a state. Viticultural areas are a hybrid appellation. In size, they range from extremely small to extremely large (larger than a few states). In terms of plantings, a viticultural area may be filled with vineyards or could be almost sparse. In terms of quality, there is no guarantee that a wine labeled with a viticultural area is any better or worse than wines that don't bear such information.
The relatively large boundaries of some viticultural areas has led to some criticism that AVAs do little to inform the consumer about their wine purchases, and that the viticultural area concept is meaningless. Despite some of the more gargantuan viticultural areas, the majority of them are much more precise and meaningful, providing consumer information and product value at the same time.
