TheAmerica first principle touted by President Donald Trump could also change the national wine industry. Because a bill proposed by two members of the American Assembly, Damon Connolly (San Rafael) and Rhodesia Ransom (Tracy), requires that wines labelled ‘American‘ be produced exclusively from grapes grown in the USA. Today, federal regulations allow these wines to have 25% of raw material from abroad.
In fact, the new law, advocated by the California association of winegrape growers and the Family winemakers of California, would bring the rest of the country into line with what is already happening on the West coast (from where more than 85% of all wine produced in the United States comes) for the term ‘California’.
Transparency and clarity for consumers are the objectives of the bill (Ab 1585). As Connolly himself explained in a press note, when a bottle labelled ‘American’ contains wines of low value from abroad, the quality of American wine is affected.
This is an issue that Italy is well acquainted with, with its efforts at European level to promote, not only in wine, the compulsory indication of the origin of raw materials on labels. “California,” recalled Natalie Collins, president of Cawg, “already applies the 100 per cent cap for wines labelled ‘California’, so extending this transparency operation to the ‘American’ designation is a logical step.”….
