Pat Stotesbery, chairman of the NVV’s Napa Name Protection Committee, NVV board member and proprietor of Ladera Vineyards, said: “The NVV has been a longtime industry leader in protecting place names for quality wine regions,” commented.
“Our goal is to ensure that when a consumer enjoys a bottle of wine with ‘Napa Valley’ on the label, they can be confident that the quality and excellence the Napa Valley stands for is contained within.”
Napa Valley was the first wine region in the world to earn similar Geographic Indication (GI) status in the People’s Republic of China in 2012; the first non-European wine region to achieve GI status in the European Union in 2007; and has obtained name protection assurances from Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Israel, New Zealand, Norway, Taiwan, Thailand and Turkey.
The NVV was the first regional wine trade association to sponsor statewide conjunctive labeling legislation in the late 1980s and also created the Napa Name Law, which went into effect in 2006, following a long legal battle that went all the way to the US Supreme Court. Both labeling laws help to further protect the integrity of the Napa Valley name.
