Midwest Gets World's Largest Wine Appellation

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed)
Jul 15th 2009 at 2:01PM

The world's largest wine appellation is right here in the U.S.A. The Upper Mississippi River Valley AVA covers 29,914 square miles along the Upper Mississippi River and its tributaries including parts of Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin. These aren't exactly areas we first think of for wine but in recent years more and more wineries have popped up in the area and good wine has been emerging from these unexpected places. The boundaries of the AVA are all part of the "driftless" Paleozoic Plateau and have a different type of soil than areas that have undergone periods of glaciation. Grapes in the Upper Mississippi Valley AVA include ones that can handle cold winters such as the Chardonel, Edelweiss, La Crosse, Marechal Foch, Frontenac and Saint Croix. The new appellation is fifty times greater than Bordeaux and officially goes into effect on July 22, 2009.

Tags: grapes, upper mississippi valley, UpperMississippiValley, wine