Texas Winemakers Asked To Pledge Honest Labeling

by Andrew Chalk

Russ Kane, a Texas wine blogger who has been discussing Texas wine longer than me (and has even written a book about the industry) has a deep commitment to Texas wine. He is appalled to see a few wineries sell non-Texas wine with labels rich in Texas symbology through a legal loophole called ‘For Sale In Texas Only’. He had a novel idea to reduce the use of this misleading practice.  

Russ has posted a pledge for Texas wineries to affirm regarding honest labeling when they use non-Texas grapes. This is a link to the pledge. Basically, he wants wineries to label such wine with the legal place of origin. In most cases this would mean the label would say ‘American’, indicating that the grapes came from ‘somewhere’ in the United States (in practice they are almost invariably from California).

I agree with Russ’s intentions and will report back on who doesn’t sign the pledge. It should be said that the vast majority of producing wineries in the state don’t use out-of-state fruit and, of those that do, some use the ‘American’ moniker now. There are just a few hold outs who hark back to an earlier era when people didn’t care where their meat, fish, vegetables and wine came from. Those days are over.