Wine Law Primer

While wine law may sound like an ultra-niche subset of legal practice, there is a surprisingly voluminous amount of regulation, caselaw, and legal scholarship on the subject. For starters, you can find a whole portion of the Code of Federal Regulations devoted to wine regs. CFR Title 27 – Alcohol, Tobacco Products and Firearms, Subchapter A Liquors, Part 24 – Wine covers definitions of wine, production, storage, shipment, and more.

Wine law touches on diverse legal disciplines including regulatory law, licensing, trademarks, contract law, intellectual property, environmental law, and financing. You could probably come up with a  seminar paper or note topic before you finish sipping a glass of pinot.

On Reserve: A Wine Law Blog is an excellent springboard for research. In addition to current awareness posts, this blog includes an extensive Suggested Reading page pointing you towards books, cases, law review articles, transnational documents and agreements, websites, and other blogs.

In terms of books, you can check out titles like these from the library to get you started –

  • The Little Red Book of Wine Law: A Case of Legal Issues [Find it]
  • From Demon to Darling: A Legal History of Wine in America [Find it]
  • Wine Politics: How Governments, Environmentalists, Mobsters, and Critics Influence the Wines We Drink [Find it]