Why Are Napa Valley Wineries Seeking to Harm Wine Drinkers?
In 2015 LESS THAN on half of one percent of Napa Valley’s grape crop was sold to out-of-state wineries and home winemakers. And the vast majority of those grapes that were made into wine in another state will be sold in that state and will say right on the bottle, “Napa Valley”, “2015”. The point is that the labeling will be 100% accurate.
However, the Napa Valley Vintners and the California Wine Institute are making the case that this shouldn’t be allowed, because…..well, because “Napa Valley”.
The Napa Valley Register recently covered the Vintners’ and the Wine Institute’s effort to stop this practices of out-of-state wineries properly labeling wine. They, along with CA Representative Mike Thompson, want to change the rules so that a winery outside CA that purchases grapes from California and finishes the wine in their state can only place “American” on the label as the origin of the grapes, rather than the actual place the grapes came from.
Why do this? Why make it more difficult for consumers to know what they are drinking? Napa Valley grapegrower Andy Beckstoffer has an answer:
“I’m very concerned about the quality of wine that goes to the consumer with Napa Valley on it and the ability to control that when it’s made in a winery out-of-state is majorly decreased. There’s a culture here in Napa of quality and I’m not sure that extends to Des Moines, Iowa.”
Has Andy tasted some of the wines that were made in Napa Valley from Napa Valley grapes? He has. That culture of quality only extends so far in the Valley and he knows it.
The tactics being taken by the Napa Valley Vintners and the California Wine Institute remind me very much of the tactics of American wholesalers when they try to defend their opposition to direct shipping or when they try to defend the Franchise laws they love so much.
If you ever want to witness plain old, simple stupid, ask a wholesaler to tell you why direct shipments are bad and Franchise laws are good. It’s like listening to a fox rail against hen-house technology.
The Napa Valley Vintners and the California Wine Institute are playing the same zero sum, plain old, stupid rhetoric game. There is no concern for the consumer whatsoever and no concern for the industry. Just themselves.
The Feds are now in the process of determining of the consumers should be given less information about the wines they buy. Let’s hope they side with the consumers and the wine industry rather than the Fox.
I think it is arrogant for one wine region to force such a major change in rulemaking on all United States wine regions. Perhaps each individual region should decide protectionist laws for their own regions just like conjunctive labeling or as states decide percentages of blends. Let the commissions of each region handle enforcement.
Put in slightly different words:
How about if each wine region had the ability to enforce a portion of the rules? For example, with conjunctive labeling, if someone doesn’t properly list a sub-AVA along with the master AVA, perhaps they can levy a fine of $5,000 per vintage of that label. Same for using an AVA on a label that is shown as bottled in another state. That way Napa can prevent out-of-state wineries from bottling with their name, if they so choose, however another region could be perfectly fine with an out-of-state winery bottling using that region’s AVA’s.
It should be very easy for one commission staff member once a month to use LabelVision to do a search each month for COLA’s that show “bottler location stateCA” and “Appellation=napa%”. Any hits get a letter of proposed assessment in much the same manner that a winery received from the liquor commission of another state if they detect an illegal shipment occurred.
Jon: Yes!
Misleading article and title – the issue that is opposed by Napa and the vintners is not the labeling of wine bottled out of state as ‘Napa’. Currently, if you put any amount of ‘Napa’ wine into a bottle, no matter what the percentage, you can label it as ‘Napa’. Napa as an AVA requires 75% or more of fruit in the bottle to be coming from Napa. So why should Des Moines Iowa be able to label a bottle with 2% Napa wine, 98% Des Moines Columbard as a Napa wine?
@NapaSmith:
You telling me that if I have 1% Napa-born juice in my wine I can put a “napa valley” ava on the label? I don’t think so. Federal law requires that to use any AVA (Napa Valley included) there must be 85% of the grapes from that AVA.
@NapaSmith Clearly has no concept of what the bottling laws for AVA are. And this is a big part of this issue, FAKE comprehension of the AVA system. The AVA system has always been predicated on the regional source of the grapes, set by survey lines for an AVA, set by political lines for County and State. We have built an entire concept about place where the vines grow based upon soils, weather, climate; but not about fermentation tank location.
Now NVV wants to use an archane aspect of labeling to diminish all other regions that choose to buy grapes and make wine where they are. The consumer should always know first and foremost where the grape came from and using the AVA system we get that done. We have no legal authority common tasting panels that certify winemaking conformity to a region, as in Europe, most likely because our American culture has been about FREE Enterprise not prescribed enterprise, protecting the established.
Kudos to CAWG for calling for abandonment of Notice 160, 160A and then immediately engaging the entire industry in a fresh look at our system and how it should be used to inform the consumer with 100% factual relevance.
@Tom Wark
That is correct unless you apply for a COLA exemption – the loop hole that the Vintners and Napa wineries are trying to close. If you are bottling the wine and selling the wine ONLY in your home state (not California), you can apply for an exemption from standard COLA regs INCLUDING labeling a wine as “Napa” though it is under the 85% rule.
” Bottlers are exempt from the labeling requirements of the FAA Act if they show to the
satisfaction of the Secretary that the wine will not be sold, offered for sale, or shipped or delivered for shipment, or otherwise introduced in, interstate or foreign commerce. ”
ref: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-06-22/pdf/2016-14696.pdf
Edit: My mistake on original post – 85%, not 75% – was writing in varietal composition
@Roger King
Kudos for joining a conversation with no real evidence to support your idealistic yet misinformed “knowledge” of AVA labeling laws /S
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