Skip to main content

A BUSKLAW Newsletter Aside: Apparently having nothing better to do, the Feds prohibit the micro-consumption of ocean-aged wine...

The folks at the U.S. Treasury Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (ATTB) have a lot of time on their hands. Otherwise, what would account for their draconian efforts to prevent Mira Winery, a reputable Napa Valley vintner, from exploring the aging effects of seawater on a small sample of their wine production? 

As Mira's President, Jim Dyke, describes in "The Wine-Dark Sea of Regulation" in today's Wall Street Journal, Mira decided to see if "intentionally submerging wine bottles for months at a time could speed the aging process and enhance flavor." So, they submerged 28 bottles of their 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon in steel cages 60 feet under the waves in Charleston Harbor, where "there exists a promising blend of temperature, pressure, and darkness, with the additional variable of constant motion."  To protect the wine, the top of each bottle was coated with a high-grade wax sealant. 

Mira retrieved the submerged wine after three months and proceeded to compare it in tastings around the country it with normally-stored wine from the same vintage and production lot. And the tasters concluded that the submerged wine showed uncharacteristically round tannins - the sign of a mature wine.  

Mira repeated the test with a few more cases and conducted more tastings. Then, in late 2014, the ATTB decided that the submerged wine could not be legally sold, shipped, or consumed, because in their opinion, wine aged in the ocean must be adulterated within the meaning of the U.S. Federal Food and Drug Act. The wine, you see, was "held under unsanitary conditions." No matter that Charleston Harbor is a renowned fishing attraction; apparently, the fish swimming about the submerged wine are perfectly fine to ingest, but somehow the wine is not! 

And there is not one shred of evidence that Mira's "drowned" wine was adulterated in any way. Mira's own laboratory tests and observations revealed that it was not contaminated. None who sampled the wine became ill. And the FDA did not deign to test any of the submerged bottles. 

The ATTB and the FDA have no business engaging in these prohibitory efforts in the absence that Mira's ocean-aged wine was in fact adulterated. And our tax dollars should not go to fund these irrational regulatory initiatives.

The federal government should instead encourage Mira's attempts to understand the ocean-aging effects on wine so that, as Mr. Dyke states, "we can try to simulate them on dry land. We don't envision expanding into vast underwater wine storage..."

I applaud Mira's efforts in seeking legal recourse against the ATTB and the FDA to end these regulatory actions run amuck.    

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The BUSKLAW June Newsletter: Forcing Business Behavior Changes Through Buried Contract Provisions: Salesforce and Camping World

As reported by  The Washington Post , business-software giant Salesforce  recently instituted a policy barring its retailer customers from using its technology to sell semi-automatic weapons, including the AR-15 used in numerous mass shootings. One such customer is  Camping World , whose Gander Outdoors division sells many "AR" and other semi-automatic rifles .  Rather than approach Camping World/Gander, a "leading" Salesforce customer, and negotiating the termination of their semi-automatic rifle sales in exchange for some benefit (such as a software discount), Salesforce was tricky. They buried a provision barring the sale of semi-automatic rifles in the acceptable-use policy  ("AUP") binding on Camping World/Gander: Salesforce wants to force Camping World/Gander to make a major change to its business model via an addition to their AUP that is irrelevant to their customer's licensed use of Salesforce software. And although sneaky, I bet tha

The BUSKLAW Halloween 2022 Post: Stephen King's Asides on Poor Writing in Fairy Tale

  Having just read  Stephen King's Fairy Tale in time for Halloween, it's appropriate to examine his asides on poor writing included in the book. (BTW, Fairy Tale is a good read with King's typical well-executed character development, plot, and a great finish to the story. But you have like the whole Grimm fairy tale genre before you read his take on it.)  Stephen King doesn't tolerate anything less than crisp prose. When the story's hero, Charlie Reade, tries to read a book about the origins of fantasy and its place in the world matrix ("what a mouthful"), he can only scan it because: It was everything I hated about what I thought of as "hoity-toity" academic writing, full of five-dollar words and tortured syntax. Maybe that's intellectual laziness on my part, but maybe not. Later on, Charlie tries to focus on a particular chapter in the "origins of fantasy" book about the story of Jack and the Beanstalk but is put off by "t

The BUSKLAW April Newsletter: A Force Majeure Clause for the New Millennium

(Author’s Note: I originally wrote this post for Y2K, but I’ve updated it using plain English.  Happy April Fool’s Day 2016!)             A standard force majeure contract clause, where "Acts of God" excuse one party from performing their obligations without that non-performance being a breach of contract, are so 20th Century. So what if fire, flood, hurricane, snowstorm, or riot excuse contractual non-performance. Those events are too mundane to contemplate! Contract lawyers desperately need a force majeure clause for the clear and present dangers of the new(er) millennium! So, as a public service to the legal profession, I’ve assumed the heavy burden of drafting a "new age" force majeure clause for my colleagues to freely use: Either party's non-performance of this agreement will be excused to the extent that it is caused by the occurrence of any of the following events or circumstances: (i) Alien abduction, alien invasion, alien cerebral possession,