Winemaker’s ad blasts Meiomi, one of California's most popular wines.

The display at Ranchmart Wine and Spirits in Kansas that sparked a false advertising dispute.

A wine and spirits store in Leawood, Kan., is suddenly caught in the middle of a false advertising dispute over one of America’s most popular wines: Meiomi Pinot Noir.

A cheeky marketing display at Ranchmart Wine & Spirits, located roughly 1 mile from the Kansas-Missouri border, features boxes of Meiomi stacked against eye-catching, orange and blue boxes of a lesser-known Pinot called Dial Tone. Above the bottles, an ad for Dial Tone, produced by Sonoma County winemaker Adam Lee, reads: “There is less sugar in 32 bottles of Dial Tone Pinot Noir than in just 1 bottle of Meiomi Pinot Noir.”

Meiomi’s parent company Constellation Brands caught wind of the display and on Sept. 25, Lee received a sternly worded letter from the conglomerate’s lawyers. The letter, which the Chronicle reviewed, demanded that Lee provide evidence to support his claims and suggested his ad may violate a federal law prohibiting false advertising. “Constellation welcomes competition in the marketplace,” the letter stated, “so long as such competition is fair and does not mislead consumers.”

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Constellation, which acquired Meiomi from founder Joe Wagner in 2015 for $315 million and which is the fourth-largest wine producer in the country according to Wine Business, did not respond to the Chronicle’s request for comment.

“ ‘Oh s—,’ was my first reaction,” Lee said of the letter. But he also admitted he was “poking the bear a little bit.”

Studies show that transparency is an increasingly important company value to food and beverage consumers. In the wine industry, this mindset has boosted the natural wine movement; inspired many grape growers to phase out herbicides like Roundup; and pushed the U.S. government to consider an ingredient labeling requirement.

Lee’s ad dares to make a contentious wine industry secret public knowledge: Wines that share the same shelf at the supermarket can have wildly varying levels of residual sugar — which refers to the amount of sugar left unfermented — and still all be classified as “dry.”

It’s widely known that the average American drinker prefers wines with some sweetness, which can also help mask some of the shortcomings of cheap, lower-quality wine. Meiomi — which has a production of over 1 million cases a year — is frequently cast as the lead villain in a group of corporate brands that wine professionals and oenophiles love to hate. (Caymus and the Prisoner are others.) Meiomi’s critics often say it’s overmanipulated or artificial, too sweet and doesn’t taste like a traditional Pinot Noir. (Wine Spectator has reported that past vintages of Meiomi contained small amounts of grapes including Riesling and Gewurztraminer.)

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The Prisoner is another Constellation-owned, mass-produced wine that wine professionals and oenophiles love to hate.

“A lot of commercially available wines are not very well made and not very honest about what is in the bottle,” said Travis Johnson, the Ranchmart general manager who created the display. “Meiomi is pretty much used as a pejorative when it comes to fine wines in the industry. It tastes like a laboratory project.”

The idea for the ad came about when Lee, who was adopted, went to Texas to meet some of his blood relatives. They presented him with a bottle of Meiomi to drink and he was “surprised at how sweet it was.” Back home in California, Lee, best known as the founder of single-vineyard Pinot brand Siduri, decided to conduct an experiment. In January, he brought a bottle of the 2021 Meiomi and a bottle of the 2022 Dial Tone to his local wine lab for testing. The analysis report, which the Chronicle reviewed, stated that the bottle of Meiomi had 19.4 grams per liter of residual sugar compared to 0.6 in the Dial Tone.

Lee did some simple math to determine the assertion in his ad, which he posted on social media. Johnson reached out and asked for a copy to display in the store, even though he sells “truckloads” of Meiomi. “I sell people Meiomi because it pays the bills,” Johnson said, estimating he’s sold roughly 800 bottles this year. “I have a never-ending infinity stack of Meiomi that just never depletes.”

While drinkers can typically perceive residual sugar above a threshold of 2 or 3 grams per liter, it’s not uncommon to find dry wines on supermarket shelves with up to 10 grams per liter. Yet Meiomi’s sugar level is nearly double that, Lee pointed out.

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He created Dial Tone to offer consumers an inexpensive Pinot Noir alternative to brands like Meiomi that’s “honestly made.” (At Ranchmart, Meiomi costs $24 and Dial Tone $36, though Lee said Dial Tone is sold for cheaper elsewhere.) Lee said he doesn’t use artificial additives like oak chips, a cheaper alternative to oak barrels to impart an oaky flavor, or grape juice concentrate like Mega Purple. Typically used to intensify a wine’s color, Mega Purple also increases the wine’s sugar content.

Ranchmart general manager Travis Johnson created the display even though Meiomi is one of the shop’s best-selling wines.

“I think that everyone needs wines to start out with, and a lot of people start out with sweeter wines. I don’t have an issue with that,” Lee said. “I do think it’s a problem to have this level of sweetness in a wine classified as the same thing as the dry, traditional Pinot Noirs that most everyone else makes.” Lee doesn’t necessarily think ingredient labeling is the best solution but suggested that retailers and restaurants could better differentiate sweetness in the presentation of their inventory.

When he received the letter from Constellation, Lee conducted a second analysis, testing the subsequent vintage of each wine: the 2022 Meiomi and 2023 Dial Tone. The sugar levels were lower for both — 18.3 grams per liter for Meiomi and 0.4 for Dial Tone — but Lee believes it actually strengthens his marketing proposition. Now, the math enables him to claim that there’s less residual sugar in 45 bottles of Dial Tone than in a single bottle of Meiomi, up from 32. According to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Meiomi’s most recent release, the 2023 Pinot Noir, contains 21 grams of sugar per liter.

After consulting his lawyer, Lee sent Constellation a response with the recent lab results but didn’t back off his brazen approach. “I think you’re saying that I should keep making truthful statements about Meiomi,” he wrote. “Thanks for that. Like most people these days, I care about how much sugar I ingest.”

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He concluded with an offer to sell Constellation a couple of bottles of Dial Tone so the company can conduct their own tests. “Just send me the credit card information,” the letter quipped.

He’s not too worried about a potential lawsuit, stating, “the numbers are what the numbers are.” Plus, he said, his insurance would cover any advertising-related litigation. Similarly, Johnson said he’s not concerned that Constellation will pursue legal action against Ranchmart — and doesn’t plan to take the display down.

“It’s a great conversation starter,” said Johnson, “and a great way to convert people to drink things based on what they like, not just based on what a great marketing budget tells them to.”

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Reach Jess Lander: [email protected]

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Winemaker’s ad blasts Meiomi, one of California's most popular wines.