In wine marketing, an appellation or American ­Viticultural Area (AVA) is a way to differentiate your wine from others and define its sense of place. Washington State has 13 designated AVAs, and more are likely coming. When the U.S. government first promoted the concept of AVAs years ago, they tended to focus on river valley drainages, says Dr. Wade Wolfe, wine industry veteran and co-owner of Thurston Wolfe Winery in Prosser, Washington. The regulatory government branch that designated AVAs then, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, used terms to delineate boundaries that followed the water flow through an area, […]