Oregon and federal labeling rules state that a wine must be produced in Oregon in order for it to display one of Oregon’s viticultural areas on the label. Wines produced in neighboring states may only use the broader Oregon designation.
Not sure how I feel about the decision.
Copper Cane was using grapes from Oregon but trucking them to CA to vinify and bottle.
I think he only referenced the specific Oregon sites on his cases, not on the bottle label. But if the grapes are from those regions, why can’t he say so? Whether he made the wine on site or somewhere else, why does that matter? I don’t know why it matters that he went to another state because what if his vineyard was on the south border of Oregon and he simply went five miles over into CA? Why would that be bad but if he went to the northern border of Oregon, much farther, it would be OK and he would still qualify?
I get Oregon wanting to protect its image, but really the image is only going to be the brand name. People who buy it are not that likely to care where the grapes came from, just that the wine tastes like the last bottle did. I kind of thought he was silly to ID the source at all, since that’s not what his wines were ever about.
Has anyone mentioned that Wagner is trying to overturn the trademark registration of Willamette Valley Vineyards? WVV was established in 1983, the WV AVA in 1984.
I suppose it is irrelevant to the dispute that Copper Cane’s wines are absolute dreck.
If only the quality of the wine was evaluated when determining whether the appellation was granted. Think of all the formerly at least good, if not magnificent, wines purchased by alcohol conglomerates and turned into little more than brand names sporting unidentifiable sugar-water dreck!
I just had the experience last night of trying to find a palatable wine at a typical mid-tier restaurant with lots of craft brews and cocktails, but a pedestrian wine list… Lots of the usual suspects that I know are undrinkable, like Meoimi and Duckhorn, so I figured I’d give the Seghesio Zin a try. Nope. Off dry and little if any Zin character. Sold to some bullshit luxury brands company back in 2011. I’d love to have the French approach here where they could be denied the appellation based on being unrepresentative of the appellation. I know that’s often used for bad purposes in France, but it could be a godsend here!
I don’t know why he would have bothered in the first place, since he’s building a brand name and stating the fruit source would keep him from buying from Oklahoma or wherever else he could get fine Pinot Noir grapes.
That said, if he indeed is using grapes from that appellation, I don’t know why the physical location of the wine making matters. He can make dreck in Oregon, California, or Montana, using grapes from just down the street or from anywhere else.
It’s a complicated conversation but one significant issue, in my opinion, is that it takes a tremendous amount of time, energy, and resources to develop a regions reputation. Willamette Valley wineries have spent many, many, many millions of dollars and 50 years developing the industry and region. I don’t believe that a winery in another region should simply walk in and help themselves to the results of that work and then pay their taxes, and contribute to another regions economy.
The consumer will benefit as well, by having wineries that aren’t just moving boxes of crap through the three tier system trying to have crap wines from everywhere.
I don’t feel that I should be able to simply buy fruit from Napa and take advantage of what Joe Wagner and his family spent their time, and lots of money as well, developing Northern California.
In the old days it simply wasn’t feasible to transport the grapes, so this situation was never an issue. But given the situation with Copper Canyon canceling contracts in Southern Oregon right before harvest and hanging multiple farmers out to dry, I believe even more strongly that wine regions best interests are served by wineries invested as completely as possible in the local area.
Feel free to disagree, this is an idea that has a lot of different possible solutions, including those of us consumers(and producers in my case) who dislike the Copper Canyon’s actions to simply choose not to buy any Copper Canyon wines.
Other countries do this too. You can’t buy grapes from Bordeaux and ferment in the Loire if you want to use the Bordeaux AOC.
It’s weird though that an Oregon producer can use WA or CA AVAs on the label from purchased grapes. At least I think they can. Probably not much longer.
I haven’t looked into it because it doesn’t apply to me, but wouldn’t an OR producer be barred from using the verbiage ‘Produced in bottled by: X’ with an Oregon address on the label if that producer bought grapes from WA, even if the fruit comes from the Columbia Valley AVA, which straddles the border (though 3/4 are in WA)? I know that you can’t make wine in WA using Willamette Valley on the label.
There is European precedence in regions like the Pfalz (where some vineyards lie across the border in Alsace, but are still part of the German Weinbaugebiet) and Collio where Italy and Slovenia share the DOC.
I know it doesn’t apply to the Copper Cane legislation, but it’s fuzzy nevertheless.
Does it matter where the wines are to be sold? Back in the 1990s I worked at a winery in Indiana that contracted with multiple California vineyards for fruit. They would crush/press there and flash freeze the juice/must and tanker it back to be finished in Indy. The bottles sold out of the winery or in local retail had labels with the AVAs on the labels while the bottles that were shipped to retail out of state all just had USA on the label.
This is an interstate commerce issue. If you sell across state lines, you need to follow TTB rules. If you sell the wine only in the state where it’s produced you need to follow state laws. Some states have their own label approval rules/process.
Exactly. The rules do not allow what they did. If rules such as these get overturned through court action, American AVAs will eventually be meaningless.
Isn’t the idea of the AVA designation about where the grapes are grown? Why does location of vinification matter? Seems like ultimate quality of the wine would be impacted more by the method/style of vinification than simply the location of the winery. Unless an AVA specified using only local, wild yeasts or something like that.
He agreed to change the label AFTER selling the remaining 900K bottles. That’s a lot of bad PN.
Contrarian view: a million bottles of PN with Oregon splashed all over the label consumed throughout the US it is good for the overall demand of Oregon wine.
I understand where you’re coming from; but by this logic, a California restaurant should not be able to serve “Hudson Valley foie gras” (for example), or specialty meats/produce they want to label from anywhere outside their area.
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