Francesco Lollobrigida: “If wine is made with alcohol, you call it wine. If not, in a different way”

“I don’t dispute that someone doesn’t drink alcohol; on the contrary, it’s a legitimate choice for those who think it’s really harmful, as some people try to certify with respect to a product that has been used by everyone for 3,000 years, and I have to say they are all people of sound mind. Now, if wine is made with alcohol, you call it wine. If you want to make grape juice, must and you want to distribute it to everyone, you just call it something else”. Thus Francesco Lollobrigida, Minister of Agriculture and Food Sovereignty, at Eima International - International Exhibition of Machinery for Agriculture and Gardening. Mechanization Fair, on stage today at BolognaFiere.
“This”, Lollobrigida added, “is an invitation to also defend the typicality and typology of some productions and their names. We will go to Europe as is normal, to reason together to defend quality”. This, Lollobrigida goes on to explain, is the meaning of “food sovereignty”: “it is not autarky”, he clarifies, as also reiterated to WineNews, “but the opposite. There are strategic sectors where we are at 70% export, this is what we are aiming for, which is the opposite of autarky that means doing everything at home. Go figure, it’s madness. Sovereignty”, he concluded, “is to defend one’s brands one’s productions from non-normal aggressions, that is, those that can harm”.