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Samantha Cole Johnson

Samantha Cole Johnson

Senior US Editor at JancisRobinson.com, MW student, and Portland-based wine writer, educator, and speaker.

Aug 3, 2026

6:00
Mm-hmm
6:00
... in- In the legal part of it, which we can get into in a second, but I would also say that AVA really doesn't matter as much as people think it does.
6:10
It's...
6:11
In many cases, it's much more for the benefit of marketing, not in an icky way, where we're trying to sell you on a specific thing, but more in a way where producers need to band together in order to bring their wines to a market.
6:30
One producer probably can't afford to take their wines to Indiana and show them to a bunch of people.
6:37
But if you get everybody paying into a collective pool, and then someone from that organization going to show a bunch of wines in Indiana, in New York, in Kentucky, wherever you are in this country, that's much more feasible.
6:53
So something like the Columbia Gorge, for instance, which is a AVA that straddles Oregon and Washington, and it runs, it runs from west to east, and for every mile east you go, there's an inch less rainfall, which means it is an entirely different growing environment on the west end of the AVA than it is on the east end.

18 MINS LATER

25:19
Well, you know, I mean, they-

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