Issue link: http://winesandvines.uberflip.com/i/732978
58 WINES&VINES October 2016 WINEMAKING PRACTICAL WINERY & VINEYARD may be tweaking alcohol content on the label to reflect their perceptions of market norms and expectations for the alcohol percentage for a given type of wine (defined by variety, place of origin and so on). Given the rise in wine alcohol concentra- tion during the study period and the nega- tive press and reviews for high-alcohol wines, it is not too surprising to see wine- makers erring in the direction of understat- ing the alcohol content of some wines in ways that the law allows. The wide error tolerances provided by current U.S. law took effect in 1949. Perhaps it is time to review that policy. Julian Alston is a distinguished professor in the De- partment of Agricultural & Resource Economics and director of the Robert Mondavi Institute Center for Wine Economics at the University of California, Davis. Kate Fuller is assistant professor and extension spe- cialist at Montana State University and completed her Ph.D. dissertation at UC Davis on the economics of Pierce's disease in California. Jim Lapsley is an aca- demic researcher at the University of California Agri- cultural Issues Center and adjunct associate professor in the Department of Viticulture & Enology at UC Davis, where he taught wine business and marketing after having worked for many years as a commercial winemaker in California. While not all wineries have sophisticated onsite labs, most are able to conduct simple tests such as alcohol by volume, which must be printed on all wines offered for sale. BARBARA SUMMER