Authenticity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR5_ceEE0Cc

I came across a news story about 3200 bottles of Gallo’s Andre ‘California Champagne’ being seized by EU officials in Belgium, not more than three hours’ drive from the vineyards of Champagne. (Better yet, I came across a video of the subsequent destruction of the contraband!)

EU laws consider Champagne to be unique to the traditional French region bearing that name, and it is illegal to import wines into the EU bearing any reference to Champagne or ‘Methode Champenoise’ on the label or packaging – it is a serious offense, akin to fraud.

Even in this country, there have been some ‘scuffles’ over regional naming of wines, most notably between Fred Franzia and his neighboring vintners in the Napa Valley, over Fred’s ‘Napa Ridge’ label, which contained mostly cheap fruit from the San Joaquin Valley. Up valley in Calistoga, there are some similar discussions about a proposed AVA there – the owners of Calistoga Cellars are concerned that they may lose the ability to use their brand name, unless they limit their fruit purchases to only the Calistoga area.

At some level, wine drinkers seem to desire authentic wines – they want to know that what they are drinking is a representation and a product of a unique place and vintage. Perhaps this is less important for wines intended as simple, mass-marketed consumer beverages, but at the same time, it is unfair for those types of wines to trade on the reputation of classic regions, such as Champagne – or even upon that of smaller, younger American appellations which are aspiring to create their own vinous legacy.

The wines I make are labeled ‘Estate’ which indicates that they are entirely grown in vineyards under our control, in the same appellation (the Edna Valley AVA, in our case,) as our production facility, that we produce all the wines in our own Estate winery, and that no part of them can ever leave the property for any reason before they are bottled and labeled. The ‘Estate’ designation is one of the strongest guarantees of authenticity under US law – it makes no judgment of quality, but makes provenance a certainty.

Bottom line – if you ask me where one of our wines is from, I can point out over the vines and confidently say “it came from that block right over there…”

Anyway, watch the video. Fascinating to watch as they mash the cases of wine into a soupy pulp with a giant excavator. I would like to think that the smirks on the worker’s faces reflect satisfaction at avenging an affront against one of the classic wine regions of the world, protecting their borders from a fraudulent New-World threat. (Probably, they are smiling just because smashing that many bottles is so much fun!)

-NRC