United States

California makes roughly 80 percent of American wine, but wine is now produced commercially in all fifty states. The industry has two clocks. The first ran from the 1850s to 1920 and was ended by Prohibition, which closed almost every winery in the country and destroyed the market for fine wine for a generation. The second began in the 1960s and 1970s, and the modern American industry is essentially that second start.

The American appellation system, the AVA, is deliberately thinner than European law. An AVA defines a boundary and nothing else: it does not restrict grape varieties, yields, irrigation or winemaking method. So an AVA tells you where the fruit grew and leaves quality entirely to the producer. Labels therefore lead with the grape variety, which is the reverse of the French convention and is the main reason American labels are easy for beginners.

Climate is the country's real advantage and its real problem. The Pacific coast has a long, dry, reliable growing season cooled by fog and by cold ocean currents, so vintages vary far less than in northern Europe. Against that, almost all of California's vineyard is irrigated because it does not rain in summer, water rights are contested, and wildfire smoke taint has cost entire vintages in 2017, 2020 and since.

Beyond California, the important areas are Oregon's Willamette Valley for pinot noir, Washington's Columbia Valley for cabernet sauvignon, syrah and riesling on a scale most people underestimate, and New York's Finger Lakes for riesling. The east and midwest also grow hybrid and native American varieties, which is a separate wine world with its own grapes.