U.S. to ban Brunello unless importers swear it's real
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States will not allow shipments of Italy's Brunello di Montalcino to enter the country beginning on Monday, unless U.S. importers attest that the bottles actually contain the storied wine.
But the action comes too late for many U.S. consumers as several importers said they had already brought in between half and 95 percent of their allotments of the 2003 vintage.
Italian authorities seized hundreds of thousands of bottles in April because they suspected winemakers were using grapes other than Sangiovese -- the only grape allowed in Brunello di Montalcino -- to produce more of the premium Tuscan wine.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), which first threatened to bar importation in early June, published a notice on Tuesday alerting importers and wholesalers that they would have to sign a statement guaranteeing that the wine was genuine or U.S. Customs agents would not release it.
"Of our 10 producers, we had already imported 95 percent of the allotment, so the ban wasn't a big threat for us," said Mark Fornatale of Michael Skurnick Wines. "We sold it all."
"Only one customer decided not to take his wines for fear that there would be a terrible backlash," Fornatale said. "The wines are selling. If we had more of them we could sell more of them."
A quarter of Brunello di Montalcino's annual production of roughly 6.5 million bottles is sold in the United States.
Lars Leicht, an executive at Banfi, one of Italy's largest Brunello producers and one of its largest U.S. importers, confirmed that about 20,000 cases, or about half of the vintage, were being held up by Italian authorities.
"It's still being sequestered at the winery by the Italian government," Leicht said, adding that all the cases that had been imported earlier were already sold.
Chateau Ste. Michelle, the sole importer of Antinori wines, another large Brunello producer, did not return calls seeking comment.
(Editing by Richard Chang)
