Archive for the ‘Wine Legal Battles’ Category
I’m not even sure what to make of THIS. The United Nations’ "Food and Agriculture Organization" has issued a statement saying that 90% of Georgian wine sold outside that country is Fake. That’s just astounding. If it’s not wine, what is it? "Fake Georgian wines ranged from alcoholic cocktails mixing spirits, colourings and flavours to wines bearing false appellations of origin." Yuck! The Georgia wine industry has had it tough this last year, owing mainly to the Russian Government’s banning…
The Europe we all know and love from history, the one in which factions, tribes and families fight among one another for power, influence and self interest is emerging in the debate about what to do to do with a lake of European wine no one wants. The past few months has been a busy one for European wine policy. The EU released a proposal that would result in the ripping out of 400,000 hectare of vineyards and reduce the…
Well, it appears that either the nation’s wine wholesalers have had enough of Juanita Duggan or Juanita Duggan has had enough of wholesalers. Either way, it is being reported that the CEO of the Wine and Spirit Wholesalers Association (WSWA), the powerful national lobbying arm of the nation’s wine wholesalers, is jumping ship and joining the fight to keep the world safe for paper. If I had to guess (and I don’t HAVE to, but I am inclined to), I’d…
The Feds used to be very very strict about what you could put on a wine label. No naked people, no health claims and not dirty words. It all seemed fairly reasonable to me as long as the good people who approved labels didn’t go overboard in their capacity as regulators. It seems either there just aren’t enough people at the TTB to do their job or the rules have been relaxed in a serious way. I concluded this upon…
I recall, a year or so ago, sitting in a public hearing of the Sonoma County General Plan Committee. Under discussion was the proposed regulation to be incuded in the new general plan that any winery in Sonoma County must buy 70% of its grapes from Sonoma County vineyards. The proposed rule was meant to keep large "industrial" (as they called them) wineries that import grapes from across the state from sullying our county. The proposed ruled also was a…
