Malibu AVA

It's been a long time coming, but anyone who has ever taken the drive into Malibu from downtown LA would expect that an AVA would be approved eventually.  Finally, the Malibu AVA is here, but it isn't without complaints and issues, of course!

Hey, I'm Mark Aselstine with Uncorked Ventures.

I think the most interesting thing that's come across in the last day or two is down in LA, the city of Malibu has started to outlaw new grape plantings. That makes them unique in a couple of ways.

First, Malibu actually just gained its own AVA status in 2014, so there's kind of a 46-mile stretch of coastline that runs just south of Camarillo [SP] down, you know, if you know LA at all, from Canoga Park if you go straight west. You know, from a kind of sense-of-place perspective, quite clearly, you know, the coast in LA and Southern California is dramatically different weather-wise than it is inland.

But you know, this is another off-shoot of the California drought. The wine growers are going to fight it. They're going to fight it tooth-and-nail, actually, because, in essence, you're allowed to plant any type of fruit or vegetable you want, water it as much as you want, but you can't even have a grape vine kind of growing on the side of the house if you like what it looks like.

So that's kind of what's happening in Malibu. It's kind of battle number 35 or whatever it is and kind of California drought issues, but I think that eventually over the long term, you'll see a Malibu AVA which is going to slightly take advantage of the fact if you were to poll people in the United States and probably elsewhere around the world, Malibu is a familiar name.