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Chiropractic adjustments for your winery compliance

In my weekly email newsletter sent out yesterday I talked to my readers about the benefits I’ve received over the years from getting chiropractic adjustments and how I recently recognized a parallel between them and the common “pains” I see in the world of winery compliance. The parallel being that some simple adjustments can be […]

Winery Compliance Class: May 12th in Placerville

In last week’s blog post I wrote about how winery compliance is a conundrum of a task for the vast majority of winery staff responsible for managing it. What is the main factor behind this? In my opinion it comes from the following two sources: (1) They are given little to no training specific to […]

Wineries: How is your compliance confidence?

Winery compliance is  (more often than not) a conundrum. A conundrum is defined as “a difficult and intricate problem”. I think most winery staff who have had the responsibility of trying to figure out their winery’s TTB 702 report filings, excise taxes or label approvals would agree with me. So if you’re reading this and […]

AVAs on Wine Labels: Continued

Last week I wrote about the conjunctive labeling laws on the books here in California – and specifically the requirement of placing the parent AVA, Napa Valley next to any sub-AVA of it that is listed on any labels placed on a bottle of wine. I realized this topic ties directly in with a TTB […]

Give Napa Valley credit or lose your license

I recently heard from 2 clients telling me they were contacted regarding their use of a sub AVA of Napa Valley on their TTB approved wine label. What they were specifically being contacted about was that their labels did NOT also list Napa Valley next to that sub AVA. This scenario is one example of what […]

TTB Required recordkeeping for Wineries

Here’s my brief video on the 3 basic TTB required records for any US winery: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CYPkHtDSzw

How to KNOW your excise taxes (TTB) have REALLY been paid!

This headline in the wine industry last week caught my attention- Wine Cellar owner sentenced to prison . This was related to lack of payment of TTB excise taxes due for over a year’s period of time. The thing was, this business had been including on their customer’s invoices payments made for excise taxes but those […]

Free Harvest compliance “Tips & Tricks”

Harvest 2014 while underway, has been a “start, stop” sort of harvest here in Napa so far. That is the picking began and then either slowed way down or stopped while waiting for the next round of grapes to hit the “ready” stage of ripe.  Then of course here in Napa many wineries were hit […]

Yikes! Harvest 2014 is here! Does your compliance need a refresher?

The grape harvest is once again upon us. For all of you that actually means something to (all you hardworking winery folk!) you’re either excited to see it come, somewhat intrigued because it provides a change of pace or you’re very much in the “been there, done that” camp with the whole thing. If you’re […]

What do the proposed Paso Robles AVAs mean for your weigh tags right now?

I see that 11 new petitions have recently been submitted to the TTB for new AVAs all within the current Paso Robles AVA. For one, that’s a lot of slicing and dicing all at once! And of course there has already been plenty of history to the quest to create several more sub-AVAs within the […]

What does wine production really mean?

I’ve recently read some articles about random audits here in Napa county conducted by the planning office. These random audits occur annually on 5% of Napa’s wineries which hold use permits with the county planning office. One of the key items they are looking at during these audits is a winery’s production gallons. The term production gets […]

Harvest (training) on Sale!

Yep- it is game on for harvest 2013 from the sights and stories around here in Napa County. Mostly the “early” varietals so far, your lower alcohol wines. I’ve been hearing from several folks with random crush related questions around their compliance. Nothing like waiting til the last minute! If you haven’t seen it already- […]

Harvest 2013 is Here! Is Your Compliance Ready?

Another annual cycle is once again upon us in the wine business: harvest. AKA “crush”. The predictions that have been floating around out in web postings for the past month state that this will be an early and big year for grapes here in Northern California. Early and big. Two words that when used in combination […]

Guess what Alternating Proprietors? You CAN take your COLAs with you!

Today’s blog post is for anyone who either is an Alternating Proprietor (AP) or is a site that hosts them & offers TTB label approval submission assistance. I just learned this newest TTB update twist last week that can save you some time when planning for your bottlings- by eliminating the need for the label […]

TTB Label Approvals……Make Sure to Plan Ahead!

Wineries beware! TTB label approval times are now back up to over 30 days! Here is my post from 2 years ago w/info on how you can plan ahead for this necessary step in the process: All wines that are bottled by wineries to be sold for consumption are required to have a federal label […]

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