Winebits 746: “Clean wine,” convenience store wine, three-tier system

This week’s wine news: The federal government warns on “clean wine,” plus Gallo soars at convenience stores and a history of the three-tier system

• No such thing: The cyber-ether has been beside itself with news about clean wine, healthy wine, and the like over the past year or so. Now, the federal government agency that regulates alcohol has told marketers to calm down. The Tax and Trade Bureau, part of the Treasury, announced recently that “clean” should not be used to create the “misleading impression” that consumption of the alcohol beverage will have health benefits, or that the health risks otherwise associated with alcohol would be somehow lessened. The statement didn’t say if there would be legal penalties for anyone who did that; consider it a warning. And, added the bureau, “consumers should not interpret the term as meaning that the beverage is organic or has met other production standards” set by the federal government.

• Gallo soars in c-stores: The WC, ever alert to changing wine trends, keeps a sharp eye on convenience store sales, which are about the only bright spot for wine these days. As such, E&J Gallo helped a Midwestern chain increases its wine sales 8 percent over the past year. The key to success? Sweet wine, selling to Millennials, and making sure the wine was cold.

• Keeping it three-tier: Two of the most knowledgeable people in the country dissect the history of the three-term system in this interview, featuring Sovos ShipCompliant’s regulatory general counsel Alex Koral and Tom Wark, executive director of the National Association of Wine Retailers and author of the Fermentation Newsletter (both of whom have been on the blog). The interview gets a bit wonky, but it’s well worth reading for anyone who wonders how we ended up down this rabbit hole. My favorite bit? How a book published in the early 1930s, called “Towards Liquor Control,” still determines how we regulate booze in the U.S. The great Lou Bright once had one of my El Centro classes spellbound talking about the book.