Wine Grabber is an independent public index. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) or any U.S. government agency. The TTB Certificate of Label Approval registry remains the official, authoritative legal source of record.
About the Data
Wine Grabber is a public indexing and discovery layer built over U.S. federal wine label approval records. The United States requires that wine labels receive federal approval — a Certificate of Label Approval (COLA) — before the wine can be sold. TTB administers this approval process and maintains a public database of these certificates.
Wine Grabber harvests those public records and presents them in a clean, searchable interface designed for wine trade research, portfolio discovery, market monitoring, and general discovery. We do not alter, amend, or adjudicate the underlying approvals — we republish and index what TTB makes publicly available.
Source
All records in Wine Grabber originate from the TTB COLAs Online public search system operated by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB), a bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
TTB COLAs Online is a publicly accessible web system that allows anyone to search certificate of label approval records by date, class/type, brand name, and other fields. Wine Grabber accesses these records through the same public interface available to any member of the public — there is no private data feed or special API access.
The primary record identifier used by Wine Grabber is the TTB ID (also called the COLA ID or ttbid), which is the unique identifier assigned by TTB to each certificate application. Every record in Wine Grabber links back to its canonical source record on TTB COLAs Online.
Coverage
Wine Grabber shows a growing sample of public TTB COLA records. Coverage is partial and expanding — this is not a complete index of the TTB COLA archive. The corpus grows as backfill proceeds from the public TTB search system.
Important caveats about coverage:
- TTB processes hundreds to thousands of COLA applications on busy days — the full historical corpus spans decades. Wine Grabber covers a fraction of that history.
- Records may carry any status: Approved, Surrendered, Expired, or Revoked — matching the status recorded at the time of harvest.
- Not all TTB COLA classes are represented. Wine Grabber focuses on wine-class COLAs.
- Historical records prior to the harvest start date may not be present.
- Coverage by vintage year, origin, and producer will vary based on what has been harvested to date.
For complete, authoritative coverage of all COLA applications, use the official TTB COLAs Online system.
Refresh Cadence
The Wine Grabber record index and static pages are regenerated automatically on a regular cadence as the backfill corpus grows. The live search API reflects the current state of the database at query time.
TTB COLAs Online is the authoritative, continuously updated source. For the most current approval status of any specific label, always verify directly with TTB COLAs Online. A record's status in Wine Grabber reflects the status at the time of harvest — it may not reflect subsequent status changes made by TTB.
Fields Available
Each record in Wine Grabber includes the following fields extracted from the public TTB COLA records:
| Field | TTB Name | Available | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| TTB / COLA ID | TTB ID / ttbid | Yes | Primary record identifier; used for TTB source links |
| Brand Name | Brand Name | Yes | |
| Fanciful Name | Fanciful Name | Yes | Not present on all records |
| Class / Type | Class/Type Code | Yes | TTB wine classification (e.g. Table Wine, Sparkling) |
| Origin / Appellation | Origin Code | Yes | Country or U.S. state/appellation |
| Grape Varietal(s) | Grape Varietal(s) | Yes | Not present on all records |
| Wine Vintage | Wine Vintage | Yes | Not present on all records |
| Approval Date | Approval Date | Yes | |
| Status | Status | Yes | Approved, Surrendered, Expired, Revoked |
| Vendor Code | Vendor Code | Yes | TTB-assigned applicant/permittee code |
| Serial # | Serial # | Yes | Applicant's internal reference |
| Application Type | Type of Application | Yes | Label Approval, Amended, etc. |
| Formula # | Formula | Yes | Where applicable |
| Applicant name | Applicant Name | Yes | As recorded on the certificate |
| Alcohol content | Alcohol Content | Yes | Where recorded |
| Bottle size | Bottle Size | Yes | Where recorded |
| Full producer address | Producer Name & Address | Yes | Parsed from the official COLA print view |
| Government warning text | Government Warning | Yes | Where recorded on the certificate |
| Sulfite declaration | Sulfite Declaration | Yes | Where recorded on the certificate |
| Label image | Label Images | Yes | Front/back/strip label images served from the Wine Grabber archive; each record still links to the official TTB source |
Images and Historical Records
Wine Grabber does not store label images. The actual label artwork and scanned certificate images are maintained exclusively by TTB and are available on the official TTB COLA detail page for each record. Every Wine Grabber record includes a direct link to the corresponding TTB COLA detail page where the label image (where available) can be viewed.
Not all historical TTB COLA records have associated label images, particularly older records. Image availability depends on TTB's own records and digitization history.
Normalization
Wine Grabber applies minimal normalization to the public TTB data to improve searchability and display consistency:
- Brand names and fanciful names are title-cased for display.
- Origin codes and class/type codes are presented as extracted from TTB — no reclassification is applied.
- Fields absent from a given record are displayed as "—" (not available) rather than left blank.
Wine Grabber does not alter, correct, or adjudicate TTB's classification decisions. If you believe a record contains an error, the authoritative source to consult or contact is TTB directly.
Official Records
Wine Grabber is not an official TTB website and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the U.S. government or the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.
The official, authoritative, and legally binding source of record for Certificate of Label Approval information is TTB. For any regulatory, compliance, legal, or official-verification purpose, you must rely on TTB's official systems:
Wine Grabber is a convenience research and discovery tool. Do not rely on Wine Grabber data for regulatory compliance, label approval verification, import/export decisions, or any other purpose requiring a legally authoritative source.
Open TTB COLAs OnlineReport an Issue
If you notice a factual error, a data quality issue, or a record that appears to be incorrectly indexed, please contact us. Note that Wine Grabber can only correct errors in how we display or index public TTB data — errors in the underlying TTB record itself must be corrected through TTB directly.
Contact Wine GrabberFor official TTB record corrections, contact TTB directly.