Dear Friends and Fans,
Michelle and I are writing you to tell you about a very troubling thing going on here in Napa Valley: Huneeus Vintners is demanding that we stop using our family name, Faustini, for our winery.
Yes, you read that correctly: they want us to stop using our family name.
Huneeus hired a law firm with over 1,000 lawyers, threatened to sue us, and has asked the Trademark Office to cancel our trademark. Their lawyer claims that you, the consumer, are so naïve that you think we have something to do with their Faust brand of wine. We intend to fight this with everything we’ve got.
Our winery has used the family name for our business since we started it over a decade ago, and we don’t really know what we would call ourselves if we could not use our name. Huneeus has known about us for many years. It is hard for them to miss us: we belong to the same trade association, we follow each others’ social media, and their offices are only four miles from ours.
What is most disappointing to us is that the wine community in Napa Valley is very close-knit. We cooperate with each other and when there is a problem we discuss it. They did not do that here. The simply hired a 1,000 lawyer law firm to bludgeon us into dropping our family name.
If you agree that this is ridiculous, we’d ask you to let them know. You can post on their Facebook page, send them a tweet @HuneeusVintners #FreeFaustini, or send them an e-mail at service@huneeuswines.com. Hopefully, with your support, they will realize that trying to force us to stop using our family name is simply unacceptable in the wine community.
Thank you for the support,
Michelle & Anthony Faustini
WINERY
5055 Solano Ave, Napa, CA 94558
(707) 736 6050
EAST COAST TASTING ROOM
40 Centennial Dr, Long Branch, NJ 07740
(732) 383 5918