(Wines&Vines) - Come holiday season, most consumers have preferences for leftovers: turkey sandwich, roast beef hash, ham and eggs.

As hard as it may be to imagine “leftover wine,” unsold wines are a reality for wine producers. Perhaps wineries have rebranded or redesigned their packaging; maybe they’ve got a newer vintage cramming the warehouse or the tanks; maybe producers tried something new that didn’t resonate with club members or normal distribution channels.

Chains like Trader Joe’s and big box retailers commission private labels in oceanic quantities, but wineries with a few hundred (or thousands of) cases in bottle don’t necessarily have or desire that option.

Dumping wine down the drain and swallowing the loss is one possibility, but it is not without its challenges. Wendell Lee, legal counsel for the Wine Institute, shared TTB regulations:

• General: Wine on bonded wine premises may be destroyed on or off wine premises by the proprietor without payment of tax. A proprietor who wants to destroy wine on or off winery premises must file with the appropriate TTB officer an application stating the kind, alcohol content and approximate volume of wine to be destroyed, where the wine is to be destroyed and the reason for destruction. Wine to be destroyed must be inspected, and the destruction supervised, by an appropriate TTB officer unless the appropriate TTB officer authorizes the proprietor to destroy the wine without inspection and supervision. The wine must not be destroyed until the proprietor has received authority from the appropriate TTB officer.

• Record of destruction: The proprietor shall maintain a record of the volume destroyed and include the quantity on the TTB F 5120.17, Report of Bonded Wine Premises Operations. If part of the volume of the material destroyed is not wine, the volume destroyed will be reported on the basis of actual wine content of the material, excluding any dilution by water or other substance.

• Other provisions allow for wine dumped to bulk or destroyed because of casualty events (such as the Napa earthquake). In every instance, records need to be kept to ensure that the proper taxes are paid. Lee also cautioned, “TTB regulations do not regulate environmental impact, but federal, state and local environmental rules apply that can make it difficult to destroy wine.”