Gallo’s Two Rock Vineyard – Lack of Transparency Questions Legitimacy of Process

Looking at the TTB’s process for expanding the Russian River Valley AVA shows a lack of transparency, bureaucratic disorganization, fractured filings and missing information.

The chaotic and obscure character of the process makes it more probable that the TTB’s decision will be made on the basis of spin, hyperbole, lobbying and hearsay rather than on scientific, viticultural or other data.

There is simply no way for the general public to make informed comments. Consider:

• The proposal and associated documents submitted by E&J Gallo are not — not — available online. All the interested person can get online is the TTB’s condensed and filtered proposal published in the Federal Register.
• The full proposal is available to insiders, to those willing to travel to Washington D. C. and view the document or those willing to submit a written request and pay $0.20 per page for the lengthy proposal.
• The proposal doesn’t include a map of the proposed expansion boundaries. All you get is a confusing description embedded in the Federal Register document mentioned above. Here’s a quick look at that boundary description.
• TTB spokeman Art Resnick said that all the maps are maintained by the U.S. Geological survey. I’m still waiting for their call back. I’ll be finishing off the map, above, once I can find the map.
• The TTB insists that all public comments are available online, but some of those contain references to documents NOT online and, therefore, not available. For example, this letter from William Heintz which denies he is a Gallo employee refers to a July 25, 2007 letter which is not available online.

For readers ready to engage in a bit of masochism, all the documents public so far can be found here.

In the Internet age (which TTB seems reluctant to enter complete) the requirement that a person travel 3,000 miles to view a document is tantamount to classifying the document “secret.”

This lack of full online transparency and disclosure only serves to keep the public in the dark and raises doubts about the legitimacy of the entire process.

This garbled process also raises the time cost to journalists trying to report on the proposal in an accurate and complete manner.

I have obtained access to the full document and will be reporting on it in the future. In addition, I’ll be posting a detailed analysis of the public comments received by TTB regarding E&J Gallo’s request to expand the Russian River Valley AVA to include its Two Rock vineyard.

[Preview: the comments ran 38-to-7 against the expansion.]