The Atlas Peak AVA is an

American Viticultural Area An American Viticultural Area (AVA) is a designated wine grape-growing region in the United States, providing an official appellation for the mutual benefit of wineries and consumers. Winemakers frequently want their consumers to know about th ...

located within

Napa Valley AVA Napa Valley is an American Viticultural Area, American Viticultural Area (AVA) located in Napa County, California, Napa County in California's Wine Country. It was established by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms , Bureau of Alcohol, ...

just northeast of the city of Napa. The

appellation An appellation is a legally defined and protected geographical indication primarily used to identify where the grapes for a wine were grown, although other types of food often have appellations as well. Restrictions other than geographical boun ...

sits on a higher elevation than most of Napa's wine region which limits the effects of the cool fog coming in from

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

. The westward orientation of most vineyards on the

Vaca Mountains The Vaca Mountains are a mountain range in Napa and Solano Counties, California that is one of the California Coast Ranges. They represent the easternmost of the Inner Coast Ranges in north−central California, and divide the Suisun Valley o ...

also extends the amount of direct sunlight on the grapes. The soil of this AVA is

volcanic A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates ...

and very

porous Porosity or void fraction is a measure of the void (i.e. "empty") spaces in a material, and is a fraction of the volume of voids over the total volume, between 0 and 1, or as a percentage between 0% and 100%. Strictly speaking, some tests measure ...

which allows it to cool down quickly despite the increased sunlight. The area has a fairly significant

diurnal temperature variation In meteorology, diurnal temperature variation is the variation between a high air temperature and a low temperature that occurs during the same day. Temperature lag Temperature lag is an important factor in diurnal temperature variation: peak ...

upwards of between daytime and night. This contributes to the balance of

acidity In computer science, ACID ( atomicity, consistency, isolation, durability) is a set of properties of database transactions intended to guarantee data validity despite errors, power failures, and other mishaps. In the context of databases, a sequ ...

that grapes from Atlas Peak vineyards are known to have. In August 2020, Atlas Peak was evacuated due to the

Hennessey Fire The LNU Lightning Complex fires were a large complex of wildfires that burned during the 2020 California wildfire season across much of the Wine Country area of Northern California – Lake, Napa, Sonoma, Solano, and Yolo Counties, from Aug ...

, which resulted in the burning of over in five counties, including in north Atlas Peak.

References

American Viticultural Areas of the San Francisco Bay Area Vaca Mountains Geography of Napa County, California 1992 establishments in California American Viticultural Areas {{wine-region-stub

See also

References