Washington, D.C.—Since Jan. 1, 2011, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) has received 37,960 applications for label approvals. Of these, 31,032 were for wine labels. “By comparison, for the same period last year, we received 32,117 label applications, of which 26,763 were for wine,” according to Thomas Hogue, TTB congressional liaison and acting media representative. “We’ve been seeing an increase in wine COLAs (certificate of label approval) over the years,” said Hogue, whose career at TTB began in 1991, when he was a field inspector for what was then the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.