What do "produced by" and "estate bottled" indicate on a wine label?
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Dear Dr. Vinny,
Can you help me determine the difference between a winery and a production facility? Also, does the winery have to grow the grapes and own the vineyards to be able to indicate “produced by” or is that only reserved for the “estate” designation?
—Dan D., El Cajon, Calif.
Dear Dan,
Good questions! A winery is the same thing as a production facility, but some folks prefer one term over the other. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read or heard someone go on about a “state-of-the-art winemaking facility” and I think to myself, “Why not just call it a ‘winery?’”
I think that the two terms can invoke different feelings—we think of wineries as smaller and romantic, and production facilities sound bigger and more modern. Keep in mind that it’s not necessary to own your own winery building to be a winemaker. You can rent space at someone else’s facility, or make your wine in a co-op. Likewise, you don’t have to own your own vineyards to make wine—you can purchase grapes—either through a contract where the grapegrowing decisions are included, or just by buying the grapes on the open market when harvest rolls around.
All of these different scenarios lead to some pretty confusing laws to account for all of the ways wine can be labeled. I’ve gone into those in greater detail before, but I’ll just concentrate on the specific situations you’re asking about here. If a wine says “produced by” or “made by,” you know that the wine inside the bottle was made by the company listed (and not, say, at a rented space). “Produced by” doesn’t imply anything about the source of the grapes—the grapes could be purchased or from their own vineyards, or some combination thereof.
The word “estate” doesn’t have any legal meaning when it’s used in the name of the winery—I can call a wine label Dr. Vinny’s Estate and not own a lick of land. But if a wine is labeled as “estate bottled,” that means the winery listed on the label owns or controls 100 percent of the grapes that went into that bottle, and the grapes were crushed, fermented, finished, aged and bottled all in the same place. Furthermore, that place has to be located in the same viticultural area that’s listed on the bottle.
—Dr. Vinny
