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Wineries – Do you know if your records paper trail is complete?
Wine making compliance has a lot of moving parts. Those moving parts primarily consist of the records that detail the activities that happen to a wine throughout it’s “life”, generally from grape to bottle though it could also be a much shorter story. These (required) records consist of 3 main items; weigh tags, work orders […]
Correction for use of sub AVAs on a wine back label
In a recent blog post from April 28th I shared about a wine label compliance discussion I had with Rob Mondavi. In that blog I posted (incorrectly!) that listing two sub AVAs of Napa Valley on a wine’s back label would not be considered in compliance per TTB regulations. My statement was based solely on […]
Decoding a wine label decoding infographic
This interesting infographic posted by Vinepair titled “How to decode an American wine label” came across my radar recently. If you’re a regular reader of my blogs you know wine labels are a “near and dear” topic for me. (So much that I even wrote a book about them.) First of all let me give appreciative […]
Talking wine label compliance with Rob Mondavi
Winery compliance as a profession is a rare and generally unknown one. Most people I meet have no idea what the term “winery compliance” means. One of the easiest ways to explain what it is that I do is to point to a wine label and state “everything that you see there is regulated by […]
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 […]
