Click to be added!Wine labeling news ping.
Posted on 03/21/2005 9:52:50 AM PST by quantim
WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court declined to intervene Monday in a dispute over when wine companies can tout the Napa Valley name on their bottles.
Without comment, justices let stand a lower court ruling that said wine sold with "Napa" on the label must be made from at least 75 percent Napa-grown grapes. Growing conditions in California's Napa Valley are considered ideal for wine grapes.
At issue was a California law, passed in 2000, that imposed the restriction. Bronco Wine Co. argued the law was unconstitutional because it imposed on the company's free speech and bars labels already approved by federal regulators.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Click to be added!Wine labeling news ping.
I'll drink to that (or just about anything)
What's the difference between this and naming wines after regions in France?
Same concept, but I don't know what the legal distinctions are.
I know a lot of Freepers like to pick on the French, but I tend to agree that only wines from certain regions should be allowed to bear the name of that region.
The difference is that the wines Bronco were making did not contain 75% grapes from the area named on the bottle. In France, wine labeling is very strictly controlled.
What Bronco did was buy a company named "Napa Ridge" and some others with Napa names. But he was using grapes from other regions like the Central Valley.
This gives the impression that the grapes are from Napa when in fact, they're not. Bronco was trying to pull a fast one and using deceptive labels on consumers. He was trying to take advantage of the fact that most consumers are not familiar with wines in general and wine labeling in particular.
For more info on reading wine labels see : Wine Label Decoder.
It depends on how it is labeled. Example: Say a French label says Puligny-Montrachet by Leflaive, (producer) vintage 2002 you know that 100% of the chardonnay grapes are from that very specific area in Burgundy called "Puligny-Montrachet" and some labels even more specifically named after a single vineyard. You know exactly what you are getting and paying for. It is also a measure of quality. It is possible to have other domains from Burgundy producing more generic chardonnay and aren't labeled after a specific region.
In the case of California wines, same is true. Take for example a high quality chardonnay from say, Shafer, "Red Shoulder Ranch" you know that the grapes are from that specific vineyard that year (you'll pay for it too).
Then take a case like "Yellow Tail" from Australia that produces millions, yes millions of cases every year. Don't have a clue of the fruit source as it is many.
There are other obvious giveaways like "west coast" or "central coast" or just maybe the county of origin. The more specific a label, the better the quality and that is usually true from any country in general.
Note the next time you're in a wine shop and see how the prices reflect quality and labeling.
Elsewhere, it is "Sparkling Wine."
Since Napa Valley stole the names from France, why can't another vineyard do the same thing to the Napa Valley?
Sounds like a double-standard to me.
Well, that's not quite true. While certain villages and regions in France have long had high reputations, the specific laws covering naming are 20th century creatures (although the classification used in Bordeaux dates to 1855). The use of generic names for wine styles, such as "chablis", "burgundy", "claret" "rhine" etc. predates the modern systems of labelling. And, in the 19th and 20th centuries, it was quite common for wines sold by French burgundy shippers to contain large amounts of wine made elsewhere from grapes grown elsewhere. There was always lot's of Algerian red in French "burgundy".
At any rate, as wine industries sprang up in California and other parts of the world, especially before wine-making became scientific in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people used the generic names as a way to identify the style of wine being offered. Even before prohibition, some of the best California wines had distinctive names, although rarely the names of varietal grapes.
After prohibition, the use of generic names for the reestablished wine industry was still necessary because that's the only way most people would have a clue what style the were getting. And, indeed, while grape blends were not necessarily the same as in Europe, most (reputable) California winemakers made the various generics in different styles to approximate their namesakes.
It's only since WWII that most California wineries have made varietal wines (Beaulieu Vinyard "BV", Inglenook and Simi being notable exceptions pre-WWII: the '41 BV Reserve Cab and '41 Inglenook Cask Cab are still probably the best wines made in California in the 20th century -- going strong when last tasted in the mid-1980s-- and the '35 Simi was a very great wine as well, at least when I last had one around 1975), or that the market would pay for them. In 1960, there were less than 1000 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon in all of California, and probably no more than 50 acres of chardonnay. Lots of Zin, carignan, chenin blanc, sauvignon blanc and semillion.
Anyway, its not like anyone went out to steal the names, and naming in California has gotten much better over the years: now there's even a "Rutherford Bench" appellation, which recognizes the truly special gout de terroir in wines made from grapes grown in a very small subset of the Napa Valley.
Oh for the days of my youth, when Beaulieu Vinyards Georges de Latour Private Reserve Cab was $1.50 a bottle and the Rutherford Cab $1.00 a bottle, and if you knew Andre you could get vintages other than what was currently on offer.... So, the
Prior to prohibition, even the French ranked the wines of Kansas and Missouri as the world's finest.
There is no way in hell you will ever learn such a thing in Wine Dictator, or any of the wine web sites. NAPA or NOTHING is the battle cry, and it hasn't even started to get nasty.
They can't anymore. To be sure though in the past it has happened. Gallo was sued to stop using the term "Chablis" - your point of Champagne is probably the best example out there.
Bronco Wine Company is owned by the notorious Fred Franzia, who enjoys blending small amounts of Napa's Worst with Central Valley grapes that are more fit for jelly than for wine. In addition to being a Gallo nephew, he is also famous for introducing to the world Charles Shaw wines, aka, Two Buck Chuck.
I'm sure that he would LOVE to brand his 20% Napa, 80% Delano/Bakersfield wines as "Napa Valley," but this wine snob disagrees.
Hopefully they got nailed with all the court costs, too.
Gallo....don't they make Boones Farm......l
Gallo....don't they make Boones Farm......
Yep, they make Boone's Farm and Carlo Rossi (in the big fat jug), both of which have been giving high schoolers hangovers since the days of sock hops.
The question is, who makes Night Train?
Someone very, very evil...
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