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Boalt's Wine Law Class a First
Boalt Hall is making history in the field of wine law, becoming home this fall to the first full-semester wine law course presented in the United States. Richard Mendelson, a partner at Napa's Dickenson, Peatman & Fogarty, brings more than two decades of immersion in the field to his classroom lectures. And his experience goes beyond a successful legal practice: Mendelson has taught wine law in both France and the United States, and has become a successful winemaker himself.
Mendelson said that when he moved to Napa, California, in the 1980s to explore practicing wine law, acquaintances scoffed. "At the time people laughed, even in Napa. 'What do you mean? There's no such thing as wine law,' " he recounted. But Mendelson said that as a large, growing and heavily regulated industry, wine was a natural area to explore and is a thriving area of practice.
Mendelson said his subject is both an unusual and a particularly rich one because it focuses on a specific business sector and "covers a lot of different areas of the law." The course, called Wine Law, touches on topics ranging from Prohibition and 21st Amendment jurisprudence to regulatory systems, wine labeling, appellations of origin, land-use planning and international trade policy.
"Even for those people who are not going to make it a career, the wine industry, both in terms of the growth of the industry and the legal developments around it, is at a very interesting point," Mendelson said.
Forty-five students are enrolled in the class this semester.
Beyond the purely legal treatment of its subject, Mendelson's class will consider the product's physical properties, too. As part of the class, he will conduct a tasting of 2003 pinot noir from his own Mendelson Vineyards winery in the Napa Valley's Oak Knoll District. Mendelson makes two highly rated dessert wines as well: a muscat canelli and a pinot gris.
Mendelson said with the grape harvest at hand and California's dry season nearly over, his mind is on more than the law of wine. "It was a very cool August," he said. "We haven't had the ripening and we're getting to the point where when we hear there could be rain, people get very nervous."
(9/21/05)
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