How CA can guarantee that “American” wine uses American grapes

By Jason Smith, especially for CalMatters

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The California Legislature will soon have to choose whether to side with global beverage companies that view iconic California wineries and producers as disposableor standing behind the California industry, which is being pressed on all sides.

Legislation currently before the state Senate, Assembly Bill 1585is personal as my family’s 51 year old wine grape business will be closing its doors this year.

For three generations we have been growing wine grapes on the Central Coast of California. We’ve lived through recessions, droughts, changing consumer tastes, labor shortages and rising costs. We’ve worked through good years and bad, believing that if we grow a quality product and work hard, there will always be a place for California-grown grapes in California wine.

My father built this business believing that California wine was one of America’s great agricultural success stories. For decades, producers, wineries, agricultural workers and rural communities have grown together. We have invested millions of dollars in vineyards, equipment, employees and the future of California agriculture.

We never imagined that one of the greatest threats to our survival would come from mixing imported wine into products labeled “American” while California grapes were left to rot on the vine.

Today, this belief is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.

As our family business winds down, one fact is particularly hard to accept: While California growers left an estimated 400,000 tons of wine grapes unharvested last year, some of the country’s largest wine companies imported nearly the same amount of draft wine and continued to sell their products under the “American” label.

That’s why AB 1585 matters.

The bill from the National Assembly Damon ConnellyDemocrat from San Rafael, closes a loophole that allows a wine labeled “American” to contain up to 25 percent imported wine and still be sold as an American product. Most users have no idea this is happening. If a bottle says “American,” they naturally assume the wine comes from American vineyards.

In virtually any other major wine-producing nation, this 100% guess would be 100% correct. For example, a French wine comes 100% from France. Yet in the United States, imported wine can make up a quarter of the bottle and still be labeled “American”.

The largest wineries, usually multinational beverage companies, claim they need this flexibility because they cannot get enough wine in the country. That argument falls apart when hundreds of thousands of tons of California grapes go unpicked.

The reality is simpler: Imported draft wine is often cheaper than California-grown fruit. For large companies, it’s a way to protect margins. For family farmers, this is a path to extinction.

This may sound dramatic, but I live this reality.

Our family is not alone. Across California, vines are being removed, growers moving away from land that has been farmed for generations, and rural communities are losing jobs that have sustained local economies for decades.

When a vineyard disappears, the loss extends far beyond the farm gate. Farm workers are losing their jobs. Trucking companies are losing business. Equipment dealers are losing customers. Rural communities lose economic activity and tax revenue. California is losing agricultural production that may never return.

To be clear, AB 1585 does not ban imports or prevent wineries from sourcing wine from other countries. He’s simply saying that if a wine is marketed as American, consumers deserve transparency about what they’re buying, and American producers deserve a fair chance to compete.

The California Assembly understood this principle when lawmakers from both parties voted unanimously in favor of the bill. The Senate must now decide whether it will stand with California farmers, farmworkers, our communities and our iconic California wine industry – or instead do the bidding of a handful of multinational beverage conglomerates seeking to preserve a misleading label that benefits the bottom line.

My family’s business will not survive this downturn. After 51 years, this chapter is coming to an end.

Thousands of other manufacturers are still fighting for their future.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.