Until a wine is declared and is considered produced or finished, it is carried in the bulk wine section of the TTB report (PART VII – IN FERMENTERS END OF PERIOD (Gallons)).
From the Wine Declaration console, you can declare wines one-by-one, or by doing a mass declaration of multiple wines.
Timing Wine Declaration
Some wineries wait to declare all finished wines (defined as primary and/or malolactic fermentation has stopped and that remain un-bottled) as of December 31. If you have questions about when to declare a bulk wine, please confer with your Compliance officer, legal adviser or the TTB itself.
All wine must be declared before bottling or blending with an already-declared wine.
Specifying the Declaration Date
By default, the Declare By in the Wine Declaration console defaults to the current date and time. You can select a different date by clicking the Calendar icon and selecting the date from the calendar.
Declaring Individual Wines
To declare individual wines:
- From the Wine Declaration console, search for the wine.
- Specify the wine’s declaration date.
- Select the Tax Class for the wine. If the wine has a metric reading that satisfies the metric threshold policy, the Tax Class will automatically be selected.
- Click Declare.
- Repeat steps 3 and 4 for each wine you want to declare.
When a wine has been successfully declared, its status changes to Complete.
Mass Declaring Wines
Mass declaring wines lets you declare all of the wines listed in the Wine Declaration console that aren’t already completed.
To mass declare wines:
- From the Wine Declaration console, search for the wine.
- Specify the declaration date.
- For each wine in the list, select the Tax Class for the wine. If the wine has a metric reading that satisfies the metric threshold policy, the Tax Class will automatically be selected.
- Click Declare All.
A confirmation message displays.
- Click OK.
If no errors were encountered, your selected wines will be declared.
If any errors occur during the declaration, you can skip the wines that are causing the problem by either checking the Skip checkbox for the wine and clicking Declare All again.
In the event that you accidentally do any of the following, you'll need to roll back the operation and start again:
- Declared a wine should not have been (not done fermenting and the warning was ignored)
- Used the wrong declaration date
- Discovered the wine was in the wrong bond
However, if you have performed too many complex operations between the “real” declaration date and the one you inadvertently used, then contact support.