“ALL WINES NAMED AFTER THEIR GRAPE VARIETY COULD BE REMOVED FROM THE LIST OF EU PROTECTED WINES”. ALARM SOUNDED IN BRUSSELS BY DE CASTRO AND HERBERT DORMANN, PRESIDENT OF WINE INTERGROUP. UIV MET ON MARKET AND LABELING

“All wines named after their grape variety, like Lambrusco, Vermentino, and in part Sangiovese, could be removed from the list of EU protected wines, because the European Commission substantially wants to liberalize them”, said Paolo De Castro, coordinator for the Socialists and Democrats Group of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development in the European Parliament, according to which the EU executive argues that one thing is to protect a name with a geographical reference (for example, for Prosecco, the town of Prosecco), and quite another as well as much more difficult to do that when there is not a geographical reference, but only the name of the grape variety.
What Brussels is basically asking is, “How can I authorize a Member State who implants grape varieties and calls their wine by that same name?” De Castro does not approve of this approach at all and said, “we are doing everything possible to block this approach, but not everyone in the European wine producing countries agrees with us”.

A large delegation of UIV, the Italian Wine Union, led by the president Domenico Zonin, was in Brussels to talk about labeling and market openings.
Herbert Dormann, President of Wine Intergroup of the European Parliament addressed these important links for the future of the Italian wine industry that is increasingly focused on exports, and urged the sector to present its own labeling proposal in Brussels, as he fears what the Executive EU will propose “may be worse that what is already in place today”. Regarding market openings and competition, Dormann is “concerned about the bilateral agreements that abolished duties on wines at the expense of EU products. This is the case of Chilean and Australian wines, which enter China duty-free”.
As for denomination protection and risks for wines whose names are linked to one variety, Dormann said, “Italy has to identify what position to take. But”, he warned, “we must be aware that the name of the grape itself is not protectable because you can not prohibit someone in the EU to cultivate Lambrusco. We must focus on protecting geographical indications”. In the recent free trade agreement between the US and the countries in the Pacific, like Japan, there is no protection of geographical names, and Dormann admitted, “we do not like it, but it was predictable. The US knows that if they want to make a deal with the EU it should not fall below what has already been agreed upon with Canada”.