Wine growers group wants Mendocino County name on pertinent wine labels

Mendocino County’s vintners and grape growers will vote in July whether they want to draw attention to the region as a source for upscale wines and more than a commodity provider for wine producers in Napa, Sonoma and other California counties.

Mendocino WineGrowers Inc., the county’s main industry trade group, has been working with state Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, for the past ?18 months toward legislation in Sacramento that would require wines carry a name on the label for one of the county’s dozen appellations and for a vineyard inside the county to also carry the Mendocino County name.

That’s what the group’s executive director, Bernadette Byrne, told a joint hearing Friday of the California Assembly and Senate Select wine committees at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park.

“We want to increase the recognition of appellations in Mendocino County,” Byrne told legislators during an informational meeting in the university’s Wine Spectator Learning Center.

The term for this type of law is conjunctive labeling, and it’s already in place in Napa, Sonoma, Monterey and Paso Robles wine regions in the state.

“There is a rich history of Mendocino that can be taken worldwide,” Byrne said.

After town hall meetings in the various regions of Mendocino County, a proposal was crafted that would be “effective but not burdensome,” she said.

It calls for use of the Mendocino County name on the front or back of the wine label, and wineries would have a “generous” timeline for making changes to packaging, she said. Such label changes also must be approved by the federal Tax & Trade Bureau. The deadline would be January 2023.

The outcome of next month’s vote is expected to be known by mid-August, Byrne said.

She told the legislators the conjunctive labeling effort is part of a multiyear marketing strategy to overcome the historic challenges for Mendocino County wine and tourism.

“Having only small- and mid-sized wineries limits the clout of Mendocino,” Byrne said.

As a result, Mendocino County grapes and wine in bulk often are purchased to blend at wineries based elsewhere in the state. The county’s $138 million crop in 2018 was its largest ever, she said.

Last year’s bumper crop softened the market for the county’s grapes and bulk wine, with a number of wineries looking for buyers of their bulk wine inventory, Byrne said. And Constellation Brands’ sale earlier this year of several lower-priced brands using North Coast grapes to E. & J. Gallo Winery has made the Mendocino County wine business nervous, she said.

Representing the wine committees at the hearing Friday were state Sens. Bill Dodd, D-Napa and McGuire, and Assemblywoman Cecilia ?Aguiar-Curry, D-Napa.