12020-05-05T19:35:39-07:00Collin Hardwickee755078ed93ca4c9a609e3d8b04a1c93d4547a4371Petition to establish the Columbia Valley viticultural area.plain2020-05-05T19:35:39-07:00Walter Clore Archives, WSU MASCCollin Hardwickee755078ed93ca4c9a609e3d8b04a1c93d4547a4
The 1984 legal designation of the Columbia Valley AVA solidified a new image of Washington state. This document is the draft that Dr. Clore wrote while preparing the application for AVA status. Most text of the text in the approval forms will be copied directly from this document.
Clore was an agriculture professor and so was knowledgeable about natural features that could help establish the boundaries of the region. Features like mountains, rivers, soil composition, precipitation, and weather patterns are all invoked to argue that the Columbia Valley is a discrete place.
In fact, the line between natural and non-natural is blurry in the Columbia Valley. Wine grapes can only thrive with the aid of irrigation in the arid Eastern Washington climate. By contrast, the irrigation of wine grapes is banned by EU wine regulations.
Given settler colonists role in infringing on Native water rights, the terroir is built on colonizing actions. The Columbia Valley AVA lies predominantly on traditional Yakama lands, and uses irrigation water from rivers within those areas.
Applying the concept of terroir to a North American context can lead to the erasure of these struggles. Because terroir suggests that qualities are inherent to the land, the concept masks the ways in which human activity contributes to the products. The Columbia Valley Viticultural Area can only exist because of the human practice of irrigation; it can also only exist because of the practice of colonization. By attributing wine qualities to the land, and masking human activity, viticultural areas make an argument for the naturalization of colonialism.
