Court Says Napa Wine Must Actually Come from Napa

The California state appeals court has ruled that a 2000 California state law is valid and that California is allowed to have stricter labeling standards than the federal government.

The federal government began to define the meaning of wine growing regions, like Napa, Sonoma, Rutherford or Carnos in the 1980s. The federal rules say you cannot say Napa on the label, unless at least 75% of the wine is made from grapes grown in Napa. The federal government, however, made an exception for existing wineries that used a region name like Napa as part of the winery name. These wineries were grandfathered in and allowed to use Napa as part of the winery name even when the wine was not from Napa. This included wineries like Napa Ridge and Napa Creek.

The Napa Ridge and Napa Creek wine labels are now owned by the Bronco Wine Company, a big central valley wine producer. Bronco is most widely known for its deep discount labels, like “Two Buck Chuck”, and apparently sells mostly wine from central valley grapes under the Napa Ridge and Napa Creek wine labels.

This offended the Napa wine growers, so in 2000 they got the California state legislature to pass a stricter labeling law to forbid using wine region names in the winery name unless 75% of the grapes actually came from that region. Bronco has been fighting this law in court claiming that California cannot set tighter labeling requirements than the federal government and that this law violates Bronco’s free speech rights. The appeals court rejected those arguments and said the law was valid.

Bronco has 90 days to decide if they will appeal to the California Supreme Court. Meanwhile they are still selling wine under the Napa Ridge and Napa Creek labels that is not made from Napa grapes.