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The United States of America is the world’s fourth largest producer of wine and claims the world’s sixth highest acreage of land under vine.
California produces approximately 85% of all American wine, followed by Washington, New York, and Oregon. Compared with traditional wine-producing countries, the US has a large population, surpassing France in early 2011 to become the world’s largest wine consumer. Despite this, the US ranked only 62nd in per capita consumption by 2016, with just 30% of the population identifying as wine drinkers. In 2019, the US experienced its first decline in wine consumption in 25 years, as the industry lost market share to fast-growing categories such as canned hard seltzers, spirits, and craft beer. Still, the US continues to provide the world’s most substantial market for fine wines. Further, over the past 20 years, powerful American critics have had a significant influence on winemakers and markets worldwide.
In the early ninth century, the Viking Leif Eriksson brought his boat aground at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada, becoming the first European to definitively set foot on the North American continent. He christened his discovery Vinland—possibly a reference to the meadows before him or, as recounted in the 13th-century poem “Saga of the Greenlanders,” a tribute to the wealth of native grapevines. Unlike in South America, several species of wild grapevines awaited the first colonists of North America, including Vitis labrusca, Vitis rotundifolia, and Vitis aestivalis. Vitis vinifera, the source of fine wine
The section on other winemaking regions in the US includes the following text: ‘The Upper Mississippi River Valley AVA, spanning nearly 30,000 square miles in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois, became America’s—and the world’s—largest demarcated appellation with its formal approval in 2009.’ There must be something that I don’t understand. Why would the South Eastern Australia GI, which predated the multi-state Upper Mississippi River Valley AVA by 13 years, not qualify? The Australian GI would appear to dwarf the American AVA in size–with the size of New South Wales alone being 10 times the size of the AVA, and NSW being only one of the geographic areas included in the GI.