We’re one step closer to ingredient labels

Federal government will begin rulemaking process to add ingredients, nutrition facts to wine

The other shoe has finally dropped in the decades-old fight over ingredient labels and nutrition fact boxes for wine. The Treasury’s Tax and Trade Bureau, or TTB, which oversees alcohol regulation, has announced it will begin the process to add each to wine, beer, and spirits.

The agency has released a copy of the letter it sent last week to the three consumer groups that sued it in October. The groups’ goal was to force the TTB to add ingredient and nutriton information.

Which seems to be what has happened.

Answered the agency: “TTB is hereby granting the 2003 petition to the extent that TTB will engage in a new rulemaking on the issues of nutrient content labeling, expanded alcohol content labeling, major food allergen labeling, and ingredient labeling.”

In other words, the same information that is on ketchup, cream of mushroom soup, and almost everything else on the supermarket shelf. There might be some compromises along the way, since it really doesn’t matter how much protein wine has, and there are legitimate questions about what constitutes an ingredient. Sulfites, certainly, but oak chips?

This looks to be a victory for those of us who have been pushing for the labels since the beginning of the century. In fact, my hunch is that TTB — which I’ve been told has wanted to add the labels despite intense industry opposition — is using the lawsuit as cover to do just that. Now, when the wine industry objects, it can point to the lawsuit and say, “Hey, we’ve been forced into a corner here.”

Which doesn’t mean that the wine industry won’t fight this to the last period on the last page of the new rules. Expect immense gnashing of teeth, rending of garments, and wringing of hands as wine claims financial hardship, the difficulty of including the information on a back label, and that wine is art and doesn’t need that sort of thing.

Also expect a lawsuit, though I wonder: If wine can’t afford to add the labels, how can it afford a lawsuit?