Viticultural site selection: Testing the effectiveness of North Carolina's commercial vineyards

•We generated boundaries for all commercial vineyards in North Carolina.•We created a modeling procedure to test if regional vineyard site selection conforms to regional extension advice.•We used a novel application of relative elevation for viticultural site suitability modeling.•We used a novel approach to modeling Pierce's Disease in the Southeastern U.S.•The model produces a pass/fail viticultural site selection surface.