Tag Telling of Wine Benefits Uncorks Anger

In a startling decision that has sparked the ire of alcohol industry critics, the federal government is allowing a Napa Valley vintner to tell consumers about potential health benefits of drinking wine.

Beringer Vineyards said Friday that it soon will begin production of 100,000 tags to be placed on the necks of its wine bottles, with a six-paragraph excerpt from a “60 Minutes” program including the claim that moderate drinking of red wine “reduces the risk of heart disease.”

The approval for the neck-hangers came last week from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Treasury Department agency that regulates alcohol producers, and seems to end a contentious yearlong squabble between the bureau and winemakers over use of the “60 Minutes” material.

“We see this more as a positive event for the industry, rather than just for us. We might get a short-term blip in sales, but there’s nothing about this that’s proprietary,” said Walter Klenz, president of Beringer.

Klenz said Beringer was willingly sharing its information with other wineries, which are gearing up to follow Beringer into what almost certainly will be a new era in alcohol advertising.

“This isn’t just for (Beringer) but for all wineries,” said John De Luca, president of the Wine Institute, a San Francisco-based trade group. “This is the foundation for how we can disseminate information to the public and to policy-makers--not only from the ’60 Minutes’ broadcast, but on scientific material we’re sure is still to come.”

Consumer advocate groups responded with anger Friday to the bureau’s decision and are considering ways to oppose the ruling.

“I look at this sadly and a bit angrily and with a lot of questions,” said Dr. Jokichi Takamine, a Los Angeles physician and director of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence. “Who looked at this research? Who followed it and reviewed it?”

After the television program aired nearly a year ago, supermarket sales of red wine jumped more than 40%.

Several wineries attempted to include excerpts from the show and other studies on alcohol and health in their advertisements and promotions, only to run up against what had seemed to be a brick wall at the Treasury agency. In one instance, the bureau ordered tiny Leeward Winery of Ventura to recall a newsletter in which its winemaker discussed the TV program.

Some vintners believe that the alcohol bureau is “softening and backing down” from its longtime policy of prohibiting alcohol producers’ use of “therapeutic or curative” claims for their products.

That policy regards all claims of therapeutic benefits of alcohol as “inherently misleading and particularly deceptive in view of the possible social effect of encouraging the consumption of alcoholic beverages” by people at risk of addiction or other physical harm.

But Tom Hill, a spokesman for the bureau, said that Beringer’s tag was approved because it “meets the bureau’s guidelines, that the information has to be truthful, can’t be misleading. . . . They didn’t just take the parts that were glowing about red wine drinking and leave out parts that drinking may be harmful.”

Hill said the agency believed that the neck-hanger tag “gives the consumer enough information to make an intelligent choice.”

The alcohol bureau worked closely with Beringer on the appearance and wording of the neck-hanger tag. In the broadcast excerpt, the interviewer notes that “doctors in many countries (believe) that alcohol, in particular red wine, reduces the risk of heart disease. Now, it’s been all but confirmed.”

It goes on to quote physician Curt Ellison as being reluctant to talk about the potential benefits because “as a physician, we are all very much aware of the tremendous problems of alcohol abuse.”

In the last excerpt on the tag, the interviewer cites a Harvard study in which “light to moderate” drinkers had 25% to 40% less chance of developing heart disease, and defines moderate as two drinks a day.

Groups concerned with alcoholism disputed the two-drink definition of moderation.

Patricia A. Taylor, of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said “the overall impression given by the neck-hanger is that it’s good for you to drink this product. That’s a very strong claim to make for a product responsible for over 100,000 deaths a year.”