American Viticultural Area Boundaries and Attributes

The American Viticultural Area (AVA) Map Explorer from the Department of the Treasury provides geographic boundaries and attributes for established and proposed wine grape-growing regions. It includes information such as state, county, establishment date, and hierarchical relationships between AVAs. Data is available as downloadable shapefiles for GIS analysis.

Use Cases

• Map AVA boundaries using shapefiles to analyze geographic relationships and containment between regions.
• Analyze the distribution of AVAs by state and county attributes to understand regional wine production patterns.
• Determine if a specific address location falls within an AVA boundary for land use or regulatory compliance.
• Study the temporal establishment date of AVAs to track the historical expansion of designated wine regions.

Strengths

• Data is provided by the authoritative Department of the Treasury, ensuring official boundary definitions.
• Includes both established and proposed AVAs, offering a complete view of the regulatory landscape.
• Offers multiple data access methods, including an interactive HTML/XML explorer and downloadable GIS shapefiles.
• Released under a permissive CC-Zero license, allowing for unrestricted use and redistribution.

Limitations

• The dataset lacks explicit metadata on row or column counts, making its scale and feature set difficult to assess prior to download.
• Data is presented primarily through an interactive web map (HTML/XML), requiring extraction or use of shapefiles for programmatic analysis.
• Sample data is unavailable, preventing users from previewing the structure and quality of the attribute data.

Provenance

Source

Department of the Treasury

Collection Method

Official codified boundary descriptions for American Viticultural Areas.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated on 2025-12-12, indicating recent maintenance.

Geography

United States