Teaching An Old Wine a New AVA.
A recent discussion came up on Facebook around the use of newly created AVAs (American Viticultural Areas) on wine labels made from vintages pre the AVA's existence. The discussion was around the recently created AVA of Coombsville in eastern Napa. The question that came up was would that be allowable under the TTB's labeling regulations? i.e. If you are about to bottle a 2009 wine and wanted to put Coombsville (which became an AVA in December 2011) as an AVA on the label could you do this? Read more
Does Your Wine Have an Outdated Identity?
Did you know that all wines have a standard of identity? All US wines that is, and this is in relation to how the TTB (www.ttb.gov/wine) defines them. A required item for any wine label is what the TTB refers to as a "class & type". In most of our cases the class we are speaking of is the "grape wine" class. (Some of the others include citrus, fruit and sparkling just FYI) Then moving into the "class" part of it the list of options there used to include 17 designations of European origin. An agreement was signed between the US and the EU in 2006 which essentially removed those 17 designations for use on US wine labels unless you'd grandfathered their use in via earlier labels. Read more
Steps For Setting Up a New Wine Brand
Did you know that there are currently over 7,000 wineries in the US? That number doesn't even begin to tell us just how many brands of wine come out of those thousands of winery sites but safe to say it is easily well over 10 times that amount. So just what is in a brand name when it comes to wine? And what do you need to know in going about setting one up if you are a winery or planning to start a wine business? There are specific steps you can follow as part of your research for creating that new wine brand you are so excited about that can save you from running into some potential road blocks down the road. Read more
