No cork in sight for feud over what makes Calistoga wine

Calistoga has a special place in Wine Country history.

After all, it was a chardonnay from a small Calistoga winery, Chateau Montelena, that took top honors in the “Judgment of Paris,” the historic blind-tasting in 1976 that pitted French wines against their California cousins.

Yet the upper Napa Valley village isn’t on the list of federally recognized American Viticultural Areas. More commonly known as appellations, there are 190 of them across the country, including 27 in Sonoma and Napa counties.

An application to add Calistoga to the list has fermented a battle over the appellation system that is spilling over into Congress. At its root, the issue is what makes a Calistoga wine.

To put an appellation on the label, federal law requires that 85 percent of the grapes come from the designated region. There are exceptions for wineries that opened before 1986, though state laws in California limit the exception for wineries in Sonoma and Napa counties.

Calistoga has two wineries — Calistoga Cellars and Calistoga Estates — that use grapes grown outside the proposed viticultural area. However, unlike the infamous Bronco Wine dispute that prompted the state truth-in-labeling laws, grapes for the two wineries are grown in Napa County.

Still backers of the Calistoga appellation say they should be required to change their names. Not surprisingly, they object.

It’s a consumer protection issue, supporters say. Opponents say it’s anti-competitive.

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, an obscure federal agency that decides these matters, has landed somewhere in the middle.

The agency expressed concern that vintners can use the appellation system to drive off competition and proposed stricter rules for designating American Viticultural Areas.

In Calistoga, it wants to grandfather in Calistoga Cellars, which opened in 1998, years before the appellation was sought. Calistoga Estates, which came along later, would be required to change its name (or switch to local grapes).

That seems to be a fair compromise (except to the feuding wineries, of course), but a decision has been pending for nearly a year.

Meanwhile, members of the congressional Wine Caucus, led by Democrat Mike Thompson of St. Helena, have weighed in on behalf of Chateau Montelena and the other appellation supporters. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and five other members of Congress are siding with Calistoga Cellars.

Now the agency says it will wait for direction from the new administration. So, like a fine wine, this issue will stay in the barrel a while longer.