Is your ‘American’ wine really American? New bill would require 100% US-grown grapes

State legislators from San Rafael and Tracy have introduced a new piece of legislation that would require wine labeled as “American” to be made exclusively from grapes grown in the United States.

Current federal standards allow winemakers to use up to 25% imported wine and still label it as American. California-labeled wines are already required to be produced using only California-grown grapes, according to state law.

The legislation introduced this week, Assembly Bill 1585, is authored by California Assemblymembers Damon Connolly D-San Rafael, and Rhodesia Ransom, D-Tracy, and is co-sponsored by the California Association of Winegrape Growers and Family Winemakers of California.

“California produces 85% of all U.S. wine with many of the California winegrapes coming from the heart of the Central Valley,” said Ransom in a news release. “AB 1585 is about ensuring there is truth in labeling of a product that is important to California. It is a commonsense measure that says if you label your wine ‘American’ it better be 100% American.”

Michael Miller, the director of government regulations for the California Association of Winegrape Growers, said that the legislation intends to better inform consumers about the wine they are purchasing. 

“You could have bottles of wine on a shelf that have the exact same label, but one of them is 25% from South America, another is 25% from Europe, New Zealand, or Australia,” Miller said. “There’s no way right now for the consumer to actually know what is in the bottle.”

CAWG does not have exact data about wineries’ imports since that data is maintained by the individual wineries. But Miller noted that there has been an increase in the import of bulk wine over the past year due to market forces. Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Italy, and France are the main sources of imported bulk wine.

“Especially in California, consumers really care about their wine, and they also care about climate change. If they see a bottle labeled ‘American’ and if they don’t know that that wine has a huge carbon footprint, they’re being misled,” he said.