Establishment of the Beverly, Washington Viticultural Area

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY <SUBAGY>Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau</SUBAGY> <CFR>27 CFR Part 9</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. TTB-2022-0014; T.D. TTB-198; Ref: Notice No. 219, 219A]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1513-AD00</RIN> <SUBJECT>Establishment of the Beverly, Washington Viticultural Area</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, Treasury. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; Treasury decision. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) establishes the approximately 2,415-acre “Beverly, Washington” viticultural area (AVA) in Grant County, Washington. The Beverly, Washington AVA is located entirely within the established Columbia Valley AVA. TTB designates viticultural areas to allow vintners to better describe the origin of their wines and to allow consumers to better identify wines they may purchase. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> This final rule is effective November 29, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Mimi Torello, Regulations and Rulings Division, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, 1310 G Street NW, Box 12, Washington, DC 20005; phone 202-453-1039, ext. 432. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background on Viticultural Areas</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">TTB Authority</HD> Section 105(e) of the Federal Alcohol Administration Act (FAA Act), 27 U.S.C. 205(e), authorizes the Secretary of the Treasury to prescribe regulations for the labeling of wine, distilled spirits, and malt beverages. The FAA Act provides that these regulations should, among other things, prohibit consumer deception and the use of misleading statements on labels and ensure that labels provide the consumer with adequate information as to the identity and quality of the product. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) administers the FAA Act pursuant to section 1111(d) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, codified at 6 U.S.C. 531(d). In addition, the Secretary has delegated certain administration and enforcement of these authorities to TTB through Treasury Order 120-01. Part 4 of the TTB regulations (27 CFR part 4) authorizes TTB to establish definitive viticultural areas and regulate the use of their names as appellations of origin on wine labels and in wine advertisements. Part 9 of the TTB regulations (27 CFR part 9) sets forth standards for the preparation and submission to TTB of petitions for the establishment or modification of American viticultural areas (AVAs) and lists the approved AVAs. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Definition</HD> Section 4.25(e)(1)(i) of the TTB regulations (27 CFR 4.25(e)(1)(i)) defines a viticultural area for American wine as a delimited grape-growing region having distinguishing features as described in part 9 of the regulations and, once approved, a name and a delineated boundary codified in part 9 of the regulations. These designations allow vintners and consumers to attribute a given quality, reputation, or other characteristic of a wine made from grapes grown in an area to the wine's geographic origin. The establishment of AVAs allows vintners to describe more accurately the origin of their wines to consumers and helps consumers to identify wines they may purchase. Establishment of an AVA is neither an approval nor an endorsement by TTB of the wine produced in that area. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Requirements</HD> Section 4.25(e)(2) of the TTB regulations (27 CFR 4.25(e)(2)) outlines the procedure for proposing an AVA and allows any interested party to petition TTB to establish a grape-growing region as an AVA. Section 9.12 of the TTB regulations (27 CFR 9.12) prescribes standards for petitions to establish or modify AVAs. Petitions to establish an AVA must include the following: • Evidence that the area within the proposed AVA boundary is nationally or locally known by the AVA name specified in the petition; • An explanation of the basis for defining the boundary of the proposed AVA; • A narrative description of the features of the proposed AVA affecting viticulture, such as climate, geology, soils, physical features, and elevation, that make the proposed AVA distinctive and distinguish it from adjacent areas outside the proposed AVA boundary; • If the proposed AVA is to be established within, or overlapping, an existing AVA, an explanation that both identifies the attributes of the proposed AVA that are consistent with the existing AVA and explains how the proposed AVA is sufficiently distinct from the existing AVA and therefore appropriate for separate recognition; and • The appropriate United States Geological Survey (USGS) map(s) showing the location of the proposed AVA, with the boundary of the proposed AVA clearly drawn thereon; and • A detailed narrative description of the proposed AVA boundary based on USGS map markings. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Notice of Proposed Rulemakings and Comments Received</HD> TTB received a petition on behalf of Zirkle Fruit Company and local vineyard owners and winemakers proposing to establish the “Wanapum Village” AVA in Grant County, Washington. TTB proposed the establishment of the AVA in Notice No. 219, which published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on November 28, 2022 (87 FR 72927). In the notice, TTB summarized the evidence from the petition regarding the name, boundary, and distinguishing features for the proposed AVA. The notice also included information from the petition comparing the distinguishing features of the proposed AVA to the surrounding areas. For a detailed description of the evidence relating to the name, boundary, and distinguishing features of the proposed AVA, and for a detailed comparison of the distinguishing features of the proposed AVA to the surrounding areas, see Notice No. 219. The comment period closed on January 27, 2023. TTB received no comments in response to Notice No. 219. However, after the comment period closed, TTB received a request from the original petitioner asking to change the name of the proposed AVA from “Wanapum Village” to “Beverly, Washington.” The petitioner stated that members of the Wanapum tribe expressed concerns about the use of their name for an AVA. The petitioner included sufficient name evidence to support the proposed name change. As a result of the request, TTB published Notice No. 219A in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on October 5, 2023 (88 FR 69113), proposing to change the name of the proposed Wanapum Village AVA to “Beverly, Washington.” No other changes to the proposed AVA were included in Notice No. 219A. The comment period closed December 4, 2023. TTB received one comment in response to Notice No. 219A. The anonymous public comment expressed support for use of the name “Beverly, Washington” for the AVA, based both on respect for the Wanapum tribe regarding use of their name and “Beverly” being a common name used in the local community to describe the region. <HD SOURCE="HD1">TTB Determination</HD> After careful review of the petition and comment, TTB finds that the evidence provided by the petitioner supports the establishment of the Beverly, Washington AVA. Accordingly, under the authority of the FAA Act, section 1111(d) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, and parts 4 and 9 of the TTB regulations, TTB establishes the “Beverly, Washington” AVA in Grant County, effective 30 days from the publication date of this document. TTB has also determined that the Beverly, Washington AVA will remain part of the established Columbia Valley AVA. As discussed in Notice No. 219, the Beverly, Washington AVA shares some of the general viticultural features of the larger Columbia Valley AVA, such as elevations being below 2,000 feet and annual growing degree day (GDD) accumulations  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> that did not fall below 2,800. However, the Beverly, Washington AVA has some distinctive features, namely its soils. Within the Beverly, Washington AVA, soils are primarily formed from sand and gravel deposited by water and are classified as sand and stony loamy sand. By contrast, T.D. ATF-190, which established the Columbia Valley AVA, described the soils of the Columbia Valley AVA as fine-grained soils derived from wind-deposited silts and fine sand. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> Albert J. Winkler, <E T="03">General Viticulture</E> (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), pages 61-64. In the Winkler climate classification system, annual heat accumulation during the growing season, measured in annual GDDs, defines climatic regions. One GDD accumulates for each degree Fahrenheit (F) that a day's mean temperature is above 50 degrees F, the minimum temperature required for grapevine growth. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">The Beverly, Washington Viticultural Area</HD> Distinguishing features of the Beverly, Washington AVA include low, rolling hills with gentle to moderate slopes at an elevation of 515 to 950 feet. Soils are derived from ice-age flood deposits of sand and gravel mixed with wind-deposited sand and are excessively to somewhat excessively well-drained. The four main soil series dominating the Beverly, Washington AVA are the Burbank, Winchester, Schwana, and Quincy series. According to the petition, soils within the AVA are coarse soils, which are less susceptible to erosion than soils formed in silt and fine sand; therefore, cover crops are not currently used in the AVA. Also, coarse-textured soils without cover crops warm faster than fine-grained soils. Such warmer soils promote earlier onset of phenological states in grapes, such as bud break and veraison. Climate in the Beverly, Washington AVA is warm and windy with a higher average growing season temperature, and higher GDD accumulations than most of the surrounding regions. The average growing season temperatures for the AV ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━