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 approval. The industry term for this is certificate of label approval, or COLA. Of the three alcoholic beverage categories (Beer, Wine and spirits) the number of applications for label approval received by the federal regulating agency, the TTB from the wine industry makes up over 80% of the total. Add to this scenario the current government budget issues which have resulted in staff cuts and retirements at the TTB and the end result is label approval processing time has gone up. Many in the industry had become accustomed to their label approval turn around time lasting about 10 working days. (This is for those using the TTB’s electronic filing system, COLAs Online) That time frame now has now gone up to 38 Days! Read more
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Does Your Wine Have an Outdated Identity?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