Haw River Valley AVA

Haw River Valley is an American Viticultural Area (AVA) in North Carolina, United States. It was established as the nation's 192nd and the state's third appellation on March 30, 2009 by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), Treasury after reviewing the petition submitted by Patricia McRitchie of McRitchie Associates, LLC, on behalf of its local grape growers and winemakers, proposing a viticultural area named "Haw River Valley."

The AVA was established after Yadkin Valley and Swan Creek viticultural areas within the Yadkin Valley region. Haw River Valley covers the northern, central portion of the state encompassing 868 square miles (555,520 acres) centered around the city of Burlington and bisected by the Haw River. The appellation expands across all or portions of Alamance, Caswell, Chatham, Guilford, Orange, and Rockingham Counties being accessible between the state's largest metropolitan areas of Greensboro to the west, and Durham-Raleigh to the east on Interstate 40.

History

The "Haw" name originated with the Sissipahaw Indians living in small villages along the Haw River. After the arrival of the first Europeans in the 16th century, the Sissipahaws eventually abandoned their villages along the Haw River and joined indigenous tribes in other parts of the North Carolina Piedmont. The "Haw River" and "Haw River Valley" names both have been used in reference to the geological region of the viticultural area. In the early 1700s John Lawson, an English naturalist and surveyor, wrote an account of his party crossing the "famous Hau-River" to get a safe distance from the Sissipahaw Indians. The names "Hawfields" and "Haw River Settlement" reference the earliest colonial settlements in the Haw River Valley. Haw River Valley had a pre-Prohibition viticulture industry, when North Carolina produced the most wine than any other state, centered on its native Muscadine vine.