Important New TTB Ruling on Voluntary Nutrition Labeling and Advertising

I want to call your attention to the important new ruling from TTB on nutrition labeling and advertising for wine issued on Sept. 28. This will significantly reduce the burden on wineries that choose to voluntarily provide nutrition information and is welcome progress on an issue we have been working on for some time. As more and more consumers express interest in this information, we believe this is a critical step in making it easier for our members to meet the needs of their consumers in this evolving marketplace.

As you know, TTB has allowed voluntary nutrition labeling for wine since 2004. However, the existing procedure, as applied to wine, has made nutrition disclosure cumbersome and cost prohibitive for many wineries due to the necessity to individually test all batches of wine to verify the nutrition data. Today’s announcement will do away with this requirement and allow for the use of “typical values” or ranges with expanded tolerances which will not require any product testing for the vast majority of wine. As today’s ruling aligns TTB’s procedures with the FDA’s menu labeling requirements, wineries will soon be able to utilize the Wine Institute Nutrition Calculator for wine labels and advertising purposes just as they do for menu serving facts calculations.

Wine Institute stepped up efforts to secure this ruling several years ago as beer and spirits producers began expanding voluntary labeling of their products. Beer and distilled spirits producers have not faced the same hurdles in complying with TTB’s existing narrow tolerances due to formulaic nature of many of their products and the fact that they do not have the natural variation that wine does. Members of the Wine Institute Technical Advisory Committee (WITAC) and staff met with and briefed TTB staff and senior leadership on multiple occasions to make the case for this change.

We are pleased that this effort has led to this new ruling. WITAC will work in the coming weeks to update the existing Nutritional Data Calculator to conform with the new TTB ruling. This invaluable tool is currently available on the members website to comply with restaurant menu labeling requirements. It will soon be updated to assist members in calculating nutritional information for labeling and advertising purposes and we will let you know when this is completed.

The TTB announcement can be found here and a copy of Wine Institute’s press release is here.

Robert P. Koch
President & CEO
Wine Institute