LAURA LA TORRE, GENERAL MANAGER OF INSPECTORATE FOR QUALITY CONTROL AND FRAUD PROSECUTION, SAID TO WINENEWS: “CONTROLS ON PGI WINES ARE FAIR, OTHERWISE THESE WOULD DISTORT COMPETITION. INSPECTORS CAN DO CONTROLS, BUT ONLY ON SAMPLES ... “

According to Laura La Torre, General Manager of Quality Control and Consumer Protection Surveillance of the Quality Control and Fraud Prosecution Inspectorate, PGI wines, like their PDO “brothers”, must be subjected to the same controls. Many people criticized the choice of legislation (Decree Law No. 61-8 April 2010) to carry out blanket controls on PGI wines, especially considering the particularly sensitive market situation. They should have taken into account the extra cost especially for small and medium size companies (on this subject, see the article www.winenews.it/index.php?c=detail&id=19513&dc=15), but the clarification of the GM Laura La Torre shifts the argument to an equally important level, namely, competition.
“Currently, IGT (typical geographical indication) wines, which are now PGI” says the GM of the Quality Control and Fraud Inspectorate, “are not controlled like PDO wines, because they are controlled by our inspectors directly. At the moment only PDO wines are controlled following a precise control plan, as also requested by EU regulations. I personally think it is fair,” continues Laura La Torre, “that even PGI wines be controlled using the same plan as PDO wines, because PDO and PGI wines are no longer two wines from different categories, due to the new EU legislation. Before this, the legislation ruled that DOC and DOCG wines were wines of quality, while IGT were table wines. Now, in fact, European legislation puts the two types on the same level,” pointed out La Torre, “so in my opinion, competition would be distorted of if we were to do controls only on PDO and not IGP wines. Our inspectorate can check PGI wines, but only by sample. We need more human resources to reach 100% of the producers”.

The issue is back on the table again for the presentation of the book “The protection of PDO and PGI wines”, held on June 4th in Siena during the 43rd edition of “Wine Week”, organized by the GM of Enoteca Italiana. The author, Laura La Torre, reiterated the need to establish controls for the PGI wines and explained that her office is consulting with the regions (first of all, Tuscany) to build a control plan for PGI wines, while taking into account problems of the market and then calibrating it to a lower level.

The manager Laura La Torre, who has personally written excerpts of the Legislative Decree 61 (i.e., the “new” 164), also responded to accusations of vagueness regarding the amounts of fines for various illegal practices and provided the exact amounts of the fines (the “range” is from 500 to 40,000 euros). She also said that this legislation will ”overturn the excessive fines under the old Law 164, both in the low and high ranges. It also offers fair costs and confirms both the moral and economic value of the infringements, but without damaging anyone”.