The Lehigh Valley AVA is an American

Viticultural Viticulture (from the Latin word for ''vine'') or winegrowing (wine growing) is the cultivation and harvesting of grapes. It is a branch of the science of horticulture. While the native territory of ''Vitis vinifera'', the common grape vine, ran ...

area located in the

Lehigh Valley The Lehigh Valley (), known colloquially as The Valley, is a geographic region formed by the Lehigh River in Lehigh County and Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania. It is a component valley of the Great Appalachian Valley bound to the no ...

region of eastern

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

. The AVA includes portions of Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Schuylkill,

Carbon Carbon () is a chemical element with the symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalent—its atom making four electrons available to form covalent chemical bonds. It belongs to group 14 of the periodic table. Carbon mak ...

, and Monroe counties and the towns from

Jim Thorpe James Francis Thorpe ( Sac and Fox (Sauk): ''Wa-Tho-Huk'', translated as "Bright Path"; May 22 or 28, 1887March 28, 1953) was an American athlete and Olympic gold medalist. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe was the first Nativ ...

to Easton, portions of the Schuylkill River Valley, the

Brodhead Creek Brodhead Creek is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed April 1, 2011 tributary of the Delaware River in the Poconos of eastern Pennsylvania in the United States.Gertler, ...

watershed in

Monroe County Monroe County may refer to seventeen counties in the United States, all named for James Monroe: * Monroe County, Alabama *Monroe County, Arkansas * Monroe County, Florida * Monroe County, Georgia *Monroe County, Illinois *Monroe County, Indian ...

and part of the

Swatara Creek Swatara Creek (nicknamed the Swatty) is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August 8, 2011 tributary of the Susquehanna River in east-central Pennsylvania in the United Sta ...

watershed to the west. The wine region includes of

vineyard A vineyard (; also ) is a plantation of grape-bearing vines, grown mainly for winemaking, but also raisins, table grapes and non-alcoholic grape juice. The science, practice and study of vineyard production is known as viticulture. Vineya ...

s, planted to several ''

Vitis vinifera ''Vitis vinifera'', the common grape vine, is a species of flowering plant, native to the Mediterranean region, Central Europe, and southwestern Asia, from Morocco and Portugal north to southern Germany and east to northern Iran. There are curr ...

'' and French-American hybrid

grape varieties This list of grape varieties includes cultivated grapes, whether used for wine, or eating as a table grape, fresh or dried (raisin, currant, sultana). For a complete list of all grape species including those unimportant to agriculture, see Viti ...

. The climate of Lehigh Valley has been compared to the cooler climates of Central and Northern Europe, favoring the production of French-American hybrid grapes, especially

Chambourcin Chambourcin is a species of grapevines belonging to the ''Vitis'' genus in the flowering plant family Vitaceae. It is a French-American interspecific hybrid grape variety used for making wine. Its parentage is uncertain. The hybrid was produced ...

. Between fifteen and twenty percent of the wine produced in Pennsylvania is made from grapes grown in the Lehigh Valley AVA. The region has a

humid continental climate A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and freezing ...

(mostly ''Dfa''/''Dfb'') and is located in hardiness zones 6b and 6a.

References

{{authority control 2008 establishments in Pennsylvania American Viticultural Areas Geography of Berks County, Pennsylvania Geography of Carbon County, Pennsylvania Geography of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania Geography of Monroe County, Pennsylvania Geography of Northampton County, Pennsylvania Geography of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania Lehigh Valley Pennsylvania wine