Green light to the production limit of 300 quintals per hectare from the State-Regions Conference

“Our sole objective was to protect wine-growing areas traditionally and structurally suited to the production of ordinary wines, where quantities of grapes exceeding 300 quintals per hectare are legitimately produced. It has been a long and difficult journey, but we are satisfied with the final result, and the approach of the regulation represents a fair balance between the needs of the regulation and the demands of the different wine-growing areas”: this is how Giorgio Mercuri, president of Alleanza Cooperative Agroalimentari, comments on the positive opinion of the State-Regions Conference on the draft ministerial decree that provides for a derogation to the maximum yield of grapes per hectare in the vineyard units registered in the register, other than those claimed to produce PDO and PGI wines. The DL Rilancio, converted into Law No 77 of July 17, 2020, had reduced the maximum yield to 300 quintals per hectare, compared to the current maximum yield of 500 quintals per hectare, but specified the possibility of a derogation, for certain wine-growing areas, up to 400 quintals per hectare.

“Alleanza delle Cooperative since the beginning”, explains Mercuri, “has worked with conviction to achieve this result in order to remodel some of the approaches proposed in recent months, sometimes exploited because they were improperly related to the need to protect the PDO and PGI segment. An indiscriminate reduction in yields and productivity would have unfairly compromised many production realities and thousands of winegrowers who entrust their income to the production of ordinary wines which, it is worth remembering, are placed in a completely different market compared to PDO and PGI territorial wines. I would like to thank the Minister for Agriculture Stefano Patuanelli and the regional councilors for their work and for finding an appropriate point of convergence for the benefit of those working in the sector”.
According to the current approach, the Regions will have until January 31, 2022, to request the integration of the annex to the ministerial decree with the municipalities in derogation - i.e. that can produce up to 400 quintals per hectare - on the basis of criteria defined in the same article, or they can eliminate others, according to their own wine policy guidelines.