Alcohol labels are NOT required to list their ingredients unlike every other food and drink product in America.
This is even after the National Consumers League, 67 other organizations, and 4 deans of public health schools petitioned the TTB to require it in 2003.
The Wine Institute (California's big trade group) responded fiercely, arguing that nutrition labeling as a concept didn't even work because American obesity had increased since labels were introduced in the 1990s.
When the TTB asked for public comment, 94% of responses said no change was needed, which gives you a sense of how organized the industry pushback was.
The TTB sat on that petition for 19 years, doing nothing. In 2022, the same coalition had to sue the bureau for failing to act. They won, and the TTB agreed to begin rulemaking on mandatory ingredient labeling.
The EU began requiring ingredient labeling on wine starting December 2023.
US wine labeling standards have been essentially unchanged since 1935. Zero of the top 67 wine brands in the US voluntarily list ingredients.
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Replies (4)
Rare to see this stated so directly.
We used to add it on the label for the cider company I used to work even though it wasn't mandatory ingredients: apples 😁
Well, I think everyone ought to be free to put whatever garbage they can find in their wine - and I think I ought to be free to not buy anything that doesn't list what they have in it.
And as we've learned from the right honourable Theo Vin 🍷, there's a whole lot of poison going into what you can just buy in a regular shop.
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