EUROPEAN WINE… HERITAGE OF HUMANITY: OLD WORLD WINE IS IN UKRAINE TO PROMOTE WINE CULTURE AS A UNESCO HERITAGE OF HUMANITY AND IN PARIS TO TALK ABOUT COOPERATION

The Old World countries were founded on centuries of strife and war and are now rediscovering their common roots and similarities. This is what is happening in the Ukraine, where the idea and the first steps have been taken to nominate "Wine Culture" at the UNESCO World Heritage Site. The project, created by the Spaniard Santiago Vivanco, head of the association for the development of tourism and wine culture, will be unveiled on September 15th, but for the official application we must wait until 2013, when all the museums and wine roads, not only of Europe but the entire World, have been recorded and made available to the system on a specific website.
It is a European idea, coming from Spain, the only country where one association has 32 wine museums: it is only right to give wine the space it deserves, because without wine culture, wine-making would not be the generator of wealth and tourism that we know today. Meanwhile, in another part of the continent, in Paris, the representatives of the wine cooperatives of Italy, France and Spain (1.700 wineries producing more than 50% of all wine produced in the EU) met to reiterate, united, the need for the EU to make choices in favor of supporting the creation and development of the wine producers organizations (OP) and to concentrate supply, thereby increasing the bargaining power of producers.
"The prospects for the development of the market”, said the Frenchman Denis Verdier, “are mainly in exports and therefore this requires very strong and well-organized business structures". The cooperatives have called on Europe to extend the definition and duties of the producing organizations, providing they are formed on initiative of producers, are a minimum size and have sufficient resources. Then, it is crucial that their main task be the marketing of their member wines, but also be able to play a role in supply chain management and crisis, possibly establishing mutual aid funds for companies in difficulty.