The origin of "Texas" wine: well said, guy!

A real quickie before I get to my interviews: a comment was posted which tells the people what they need to know, so check it out, Texas.



There are more Texas wineries selling out of state fruit than we could mention here. Some are perfectly open about it, labeling the wine as "American", rather than Texas, some don't label it with an appellation at all, some are much more dishonest. And Texas law allows for the dishonesty.

Under FEDERAL wine labeling law, if the wine is labeled as Texas, at least 75% of the fruit had to come from Texas. Texas law is not so demanding, allowing a much lower percentage of native fruit, and then allowing the wine to be marked "For Sale in Texas Only" to keep the label from triggereing federal law. It's a pretty dirt little trick.

Furthermore, some Texas wineries use their brand identification to simply bottle wines without telling you anything about fruit origin. The current Llano Pinot Grigio has NO appellation listed. Wanna bet it's not from Texas? Customers should ABSOLUTELY be able to assume that wine from a Texas winery is actually FROM TEXAS. Unfortunately, both Texas and Federal labeling law provide many loopholes to fool the customer.

Same thing with a "California" wine, the 2004 Mark West Pinot Noir was cleverly from Corsica, that's Corsica, France. Said it right there on the front label, on the shelf, in the California Pinot Noir section. But because people thought of Mark West as a California brand, most people never thought to check whether the wine was actually from California.

Just read the labels folks. If it's from Texas it will say Texas, or Texas Hill Country, or Texas High Plains, or Lubbock County, or some identifiable geographical Lone Star locale.

BUT, If it says "For Sale in Texas Only", all bets are off. It's undocumented alien wine, might be from Mars.