Domestic Fortified Wine Label Topic of Lively Seminar

What to call American port-style wine continues to be the biggest marketing and promotion challenging domestic fortified wine producers. This was the consensus of producers participating in the Marketing and Promoting Sweet and Fortified Wines seminar held prior to Savor the Flavor II at Poppy Ridge Golf Course in Livermore on March 21.
Protection of place names used on American wines was a component of the 2006 trade agreement with the European Union. The result is the inability of domestic producers to use the term “port” on newly approved wine labels since March of 2007. While labels with “port” on them are still acceptable under a grandfather clause, new fortified wine labels are a confusing array of proprietary names.

Making matters worse in many cases is the inability of producers to use the word “fortified” on fortified wine labels. “This is somewhat silly,” says SFWA Executive Director Ken Young, “since TTB has a fortified wine classification and whole slew of regulations on fortified wines.” Preliminary research of TTB regulations can find no direct prohibition against the term “fortified” and there is speculation that the ban is the subject of inconsistent TTB policy interpretation.
Seminar participants engaged in lively discussion of these issues offered suggestions for fortified label names including “forte’”, Fort”, and “WSA” (wine spirits added). The participants were also in favor of pursuing efforts to lift the TTB on the use of the term “fortified” on wine labels.

In addition to the label issue, the seminar conducted by Russ Livingston, VP of Sales for Ficklin Vineyards identified three additional challenges for sweet and fortified wine producers.
1. How do we describe our product in the future?
2. It’s “an old person’s beverage”.
3. It’s either too cheap or two expensive.

SFWA Adopts Sweet and Fortified Wine Terminology Guidelines

At the January General Membership Meeting held in Sacramento during the Unified Wine and Grape Symposium, the SFWA adopted recommend terminology guidelines for domestically produced sweet and fortified wines. “We adopted these recommended guidlines in an effort to simplify sweet and fortified wine terms and easy consumer confusion,” said SFWA President Peter Prager.

While these terminology guidelines are highly recommended and will be communicated to the domestic sweet and fortified wine industry, adoption by individual producers is strictly voluntary.

Domestic Fortified Port-style Wines
a. Must be fortified with grape wine spirits.
b. “Fortified” is any grape wine blended with wine grape spirits achieving an alcohol level of 18% - 24%.
c. “Light Fortified” refers to any grape wine blended with wine grape spirits achieving an alcohol level less than 17.9% alcohol.
d. There is no recommended standard for residual sugar (RS).
e. “Ruby” is the term for a fortified port-style wine released with less than six years of barrel aging.
f. “Tawny” is the term for a fortified port-style wine released with a minimum of six years barrel aging.
g. “Vintage” is a term for a fortified port-style wine declared “vintage” by the producer, showing the vintage date on the label, and aged in barrel for no more than three years.
h. “Vintage Character” is a term for a fortified port-style wine not vintage dated and aged in barrel four to six years.

Off-dry, Semi-sweet, Sweet Unfortified Wines
a. “Off-dry” is defined as any unfortified wine with residual sugar (RS) levels between .5 and 1.9%
b. “Semi-sweet” is defined as any unfortified wine with residual sugar (RS) levels between 2.0 and 6.0%
c. “Sweet” is defined as any unfortified wine with residual sugar (RS) levels above 6.0%
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SFWA Initates Resource Partner Program

Following a recommendation made during the General Membership Meeting in January, the SFWA has established the Resource Partner program. The concept of this program is to develop a network of primarily not-for-profit wine organizations and associations that will share information on wine related activities and events that would be of mutual interest and benefit. Resource Partnerships will also be established with compatible food organizations which have products and services which could complement sweet and fortified wines.
As Resource Partners, such things as tasting events, promotional functions, tours, and education opportunities will be posted under the Resource Partners page of the SFWA website and a direct web link posted to the sponsoring partner’s website. Resource Partner information will also be posted in the soon to be developed sweetandfortified.info website.
For more information on the Resource Partner program contact SFWA at sweetandfortified@sbcglobal.net or call (916) 258-7115.
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SFWA Welcomes First Resource Partner

TAPAS President Jeff Stai (Twisted Oak Winery, Calaveras County) said in a recent conversation. “It just makes sense that we work together since a signficant portion of domestic fortified wines are made using Iberian varieties.” Portuguese varieties including Touriga Nacional, Tinta Cao, Tinta Barroca, Touriga Francesa, and Tempranillo (Tinta Roriz) are some of the Iberian grapes grown domestically used in domestic fortified port-sytle wines.

The next big event for TAPAS is the June 14, 2009 tasting at Fort Mason in San Francisco.

If you have received an award, honor or other form of recognition, please let SFWA so it can be posted on our NEW web page.
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Association Member Promotes Wine and Chocolate Pairing

SFWA Scholarship Program Put On Hold

While the Sweet and Fortified Wine Association (SFWA) remains committed to establishing scholarship program to benefit graduate and undergraduate students at California’s three principle schools of enology and viticulture, the program has been put on hold for lack of funding.

The SFWA Scholarship Golf Tournament that was scheduled for March 20 at Poppy Ridge Golf Course had to be cancelled because of low response. According to SFWA Executive Director Ken Young, “we had to have at least 42 golfer to make the tournament go and we never really got close so we had to cancel. It was too bad we couldn’t hold the tournament because it was a beautiful day in Livermore on March 20 and the course was in great shape.”

SFWA President Peter Prager said that the scholarship program is intended to help educate a new generation of winemakerw with a specialized interest in sweet and fortified wines. The scholarships were to be available to enology and viticulture students at U.C. Davis, Fresno State, and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. There are no plans at this time for raising funds for the SFWA scholarship program.
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Welcome New Founding Producer Members

SFWA welcomes Sun-Maid Growers of California as a new Founding Grower/Producers Member.

Welcome New Founding Associate Members

If you have any questions or comments, drop us an email at sweetandfortified@sbcglobal.net