Winebits 784: Ingredient labels, UPS, value wines

This week’s wine news: Ingredient label update, plus a UPS joke and $40 value wines

• Coming soon-ish? Michael Kaiser, who oversees government relations for the Wine America trade group, says we should see regulations requiring “Serving Facts/Nutrition and Allergens labeling” on wine bottles this year. It will probably be a little longer for a final rule for ingredient labeling, which has to go through another comment period. I was optimistic that we’d see extensive labeling required, but watching the wine business dig in its heels since last fall has made me reconsider. It was particularly distressing to see Philana Bouvier, president of importer, wholesaler and marketer Demeine Estates, tell last week’s SVB wine report audience that consumers didn’t care how many calories were in a glass of wine; hence, no need to put it on the bottle.

• Good old UPS: Evan Andrews, the blog’s unofficial weather forecaster, has apparently had the same problems with UPS and Fed Ex that so many blog readers have had. Andrews wrote the following on Facebook last week, which was posted over a picture of a less than accommodating UPS driver: “As a kid, did u ever knock on people’s doors and run away before they answered? Well, guess what, they’re hiring.”

• Always the Spectator: The Wine Spectator unveiled its annual list of value wines last week, and heading the rankings? A $33 cabernet sauvignon from Napa Valley’s Beaulieu Vineyard. Ironically, that was not the most expensive wine on the list, which includes “values” costing as much as $40. I guess this post, from wine marketer Tom Wark, was more prescient than we realized. Wark says wine’s problems are centered around cost, that wine is too expensive for most of us. I wonder: Would anyone at the Spectator agree with that?