11/29/07 Wine Labels

Wine Lables. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. One of the things I like best about Washington wines are the labels. Its one place that creativity shines and everyone can enjoy it. Now due to proposed regulations winemakers may be asked to add nutitional information. CLUBB: The concern is that something like nutritional labeling is going to add an economic burden to have wine tested, how far they're going to go on this is still up in the air so we're working with Wine America and the Wine Institute to really try to find a way that lessens the burden. That's Marty Clubb, owner of L'Ecole No. 41 Winery and President of the Washington Wine Institute. The Tax & Trade Bureau regulates all alcoholic beverages in the U.S. and because wine is a food stock, they want the additional information on the label like many other food products. CLUBB: Take a typical 5oz glass of wine, look at what the average caloric intake would be for that and be able to do a one line reporting as opposed to say a big table on the back of a label that might push other things off your label that quite frankly may be more inmortant. Clubb says that the smaller wineries would suffer the most from implementing the requirements. CLUBB: Of the 550 wineries in Washington State more than 90% of those tend to be small mom and pop little wineries who quite honestly struggle with dealing with all the maze of compliance that you have to deal with. The industry has until January to comment on the proposal. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.