Proposed Establishment of the Columbia Hills Viticultural Area

DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY <SUBAGY>Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau</SUBAGY> <CFR>27 CFR Part 9</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. TTB-2024-0007; Notice No. 235]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1513-AD08</RIN> <SUBJECT>Proposed Establishment of the Columbia Hills Viticultural Area</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, Treasury. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) proposes to establish the 29,387-acre “Columbia Hills” American viticultural area (AVA) in Klickitat County, Washington. The proposed AVA is located entirely within the boundaries of the existing 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. TTB invites comments on these proposals. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> TTB must receive your comments on or before February 3, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may electronically submit comments to TTB on this proposal, and view copies of this document, its supporting materials, and any comments TTB receives on it within Docket No. TTB-2024-0007 as posted on <E T="03">Regulations.gov</E> ( <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> ), the Federal e-rulemaking portal. Alternatively, you may submit comments via postal mail to the Director, Regulations and Ruling Division, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, 1310 G Street NW, Box 12, Washington, DC 20005. Please see the “Public Participation” section of this document for further information on the comments requested on this proposal and on the submission, confidentiality, and public disclosure of comments. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Karen A. Thornton, 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. 175. </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 provisions pursuant to section 1111(d) of the Homeland Security Act of 2002, as codified at 6 U.S.C. 531(d). In addition, the Secretary of the Treasury has delegated certain administrative and enforcement 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 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 that affect 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; • 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. 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. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Petition To Establish the Columbia Hills AVA</HD> TTB received a petition from Dr. Kevin R. Pogue, a geology professor, proposing to establish the “Columbia Hills” AVA. Dr. Pogue submitted the petition on behalf of Robert Lorkowski, owner of Cascade Cliffs Vineyard and Winery, which is located within the boundaries of the proposed AVA. The proposed AVA is located in Klickitat County, Washington, and is entirely within the established Columbia Valley AVA (27 CFR 9.74). There are approximately 338 acres of vineyards, owned by 19 different property owners, within the proposed AVA, as well as four wineries. The distinguishing features of the proposed Columbia Hills AVA are its topography, soils, and climate. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Proposed Columbia Hills AVA</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Name Evidence</HD> The proposed AVA takes its name from the Columbia Hills, a 35-mile-long ridgeline that parallels the north side of the Columbia River between Rowena Gap and the mouth of Rock Creek, in Klickitat County, Washington. The proposed AVA is situated on the southern slopes of the Columbia Hills. The name “Columbia Hills” is marked over the ridgeline on a copy of the U.S.G.S. 1:250,000-scale topographic map for the region of the proposed AVA, which was included in the petition. The petition includes additional evidence of use of the name “Columbia Hills” within the region of the proposed AVA. For example, the Columbia Hills Historical State Park and the Columbia Hills Natural Area Preserve are both located in the proposed AVA. A 2011 item on a local newspaper's website is titled “Mt. Hood Cycling Classic Columbia Hills Road Race.”  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Finally, a recreational vehicle campground in Dallesport, Washington, which is within the proposed AVA, is named “Columbia Hills RV.” <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>   <E T="03">https://www.columbiagorgenews.com/archive/video-mt-hood-cycling-classic-columbia-hills-road-race/article_6a1c4211-11cc-5868-9202-18e06888c2a3.html.</E> Accessed October 28, 2024. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD2">Boundary Evidence</HD> The proposed Columbia Hills AVA encompasses 29,387 acres along the predominantly south-facing slopes of the Columbia Hills. The proposed southern boundary follows the Columbia River, which marks the southern edge of the hills. The proposed western boundary follows the 300-meter elevation contour along a feature known as Rowena Gap, which marks a pronounced change in topography between the proposed AVA and the region to the west. The proposed northern boundary generally follows the 320-meter elevation contour to separate the proposed AVA from higher elevations that were not inundated by ice age floods. The proposed eastern boundary follows Rock Creek to separate the proposed AVA from the established The Burn of Columbia Valley AVA (27 CFR 9.276), which is a broad, relatively flat plateau that is a separate geographic feature from the Columbia Hills that form the proposed AVA. <HD SOURCE="HD2">Distinguishing Features</HD> According to the petition, the distinguishing features of the proposed Columbia Hills AVA are its topography, soils, and climate. <HD SOURCE="HD3">Topography</HD> According to the petition, features created by depositional and erosional processes associated with catastrophic ice age flooding dominate the topography of the proposed Columbia Hills AVA. Erosion by the floodwaters of the generally flat-lying layers of bedrock created a series of stepped terraces within the proposed AVA. The petition states that these gently-sloped terraces provide excellent locations for vineyards within the otherwise steeply-sloped valley of the Columbia River. Large, gently-sloped gravel bars deposited by ice-age floods also provide level terrain for planting vineyards within the proposed AVA. According to the petition, the ice-age flooding along the Columbia River generally did not exceed 320 meters. Therefore, elevations within the proposed Columbia Hills AVA are limited to those at or below 320 meters to exclude regions without the flood-related topographic features. To the north of the proposed AVA, the topography is much steeper and less impacted by ice-a ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 30k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━