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Comment by matchagaucho | Hacker News Reader

My nit with Napa and Sonoma wines lately is that the bottles may say 14% ABV, but are actually 16%+ ABV.

This is regressing back to Night train levels of alcohol.

Is there any laws around this having to be accurate? What makes you say it's higher than the bottle says? I know nothing about this, so mainly just curious for you to expand more on your comment.

In the UK 16% alcohol wines attract a higher rate of duty, so being accurate is pretty important. The higher alcohol percentages in fine wine are due to more sugar in the grapes from variations in the weather rather than any choice by the winemaker

My wife runs a natural-ish winery and I help out with some of the regulatory filings. All bottle labels have to be approved by TTB and include the ABV. They don't require you to submit any lab results in support of your claimed alcohol percentage, but if you're caught selling wine outside a certain margin of error it can result in some kind of sanction.

High alcohol wines are somewhat in favor for Napa/Sonoma reds, but 14% is a cutoff for lower excise tax rates and a lesser regulatory burden in general, so it wouldn't be surprising if people are trying to game this somewhat.

A funny thing about wine industry regulation is it's entirely focused on whether or not you are paying taxes. We've never had to file or demonstrate anything related to the safety or purity of our wine.

In the US, New Zealand and Australia, wine is permitted to have a variance of 1.5% ABV. In Europe, wine is only permitted to have a .5% ABV variance. Taxes may be one reason why ABV is under-reported. [1]

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/06/how-w...

I’ve been decrying the high alcohol content of Napa wines for awhile now. I’m a power drinker but sheesh some of these wines will crush you.

Didn’t know about the mislabeling, good to know.

Oh, is that what it is? I'm not used to a couple of glasses of wine putting me on the floor, but I've learned to be wary of some of the 14%+ California reds.

If that is happening in the US you only need point it out to the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) and they will get it sorted quickly.

A lot of people in USA may confuse BATF with a civilian commercial store that is the missing void in their existance.

FYI

Night Train is a "bum wine" and is infamous among the less fortunate and more adventurous among us.

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