(Wines&Vines) - The addition of 18,560 acres to the Willamette Valley AVA may be a small step for the region, but it marks the giant stride Oregon’s wine industry has taken since 1983.

King Estate Winery petitioned for the adjustment with the support of its neighbor, Iris Vineyards. The amendment, announced March 3, brings them both within the ambit of the Willamette Valley AVA, established in 1983 in large measure thanks to the efforts of David Adelsheim, founder of Adelsheim Vineyard.

“Our north property line basically abutted the AVA original line, and we were aware, of course, for 25 years that we weren’t in the Willamette Valley AVA,” explained Ed King, co-founder and CEO of King Estate.

Fitting in

While the winery has more than 1,000 acres of vineyard, it sourced most of its grapes from the Willamette Valley. King estimates that the 400,000-case winery buys approximately 10% of the state’s crop each year.

Consequently, King Estate tacked its flag to the mast of Oregon rather than the Willamette Valley, even though the levies it paid supported the Willamette wineries’ association.

“We just saw that as, ‘We’ll never be successful if Oregon isn’t successful,’” King said. “Maybe it’s a bit of an evolution on behalf of King Estate and where Oregon and the Willamette Valley are (that) it does matter to say ‘Willamette’ at this point.”

A new label bearing the Willamette name is being rolled out to mark the change, which in many respects simply shifts the winery’s identity to a more specific patch of dirt.

“The amendment really folds us in right where we belong,” King said. “What we grow ourselves is exactly the same microclimate and soils and everything else. (In fact), we’re less of an outlier physically and soil-wise than some other areas that are in the Willamette Valley.”

Yet some variation is to be expected. The Willamette Valley is a big appellation, running 120 miles north to south and 60 miles side to side and containing eight sub-appellations. The latest winery and vineyard census conducted by the Southern Oregon University Research Center found a total of 694 vineyards producing close to three-quarters of the state’s grapes.

The approval is the first change to existing AVAs in Oregon since the establishment of the Rocks of Milton-Freewater AVA in February 2015.