ITALIAN TOCAI NOW HAS THREE NEW NAMES: FOR THE WINE FROM THE FRIULI REGION IT IS TO BE ‘TOCAI FRIULANO’ IN ITALY AND ‘FRIULANO’ ABROAD, WHILE THE WINE FROM THE VENETO WILL BE CALLED ‘TAI’

The battle over the name Tocai continues. The latest development has been that the two Italian production regions of this wine, the Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia, have chosen different solutions while trying to resolve the problem.
The Veneto has, in fact, decided on the new name ‘Tai’ in a unanimous approval by the National Committee for the classification of grape varieties.
A solution that has also been deemed satisfactory by the Agricultural Minister, Paolo De Castro, who noted, “The decision that was reached offers a concrete response to producers guaranteeing the certainty that they were waiting for”.

The situation in Friuli, however, is a bit more complicated. By using a TRIPS (the international trade-related intellectual rights agreement) article that gives countries the right to recognize homonymous names of national wines and geographic denominations of countries (which was created following the agreement stipulated between the E.U. and Hungary in 1993 that blocked, precisely, the use of the name ‘Tocai’ in Italy), the Friuli Venezia Giulia region has opted to keep the name ‘Tocai Friulano’ within the Italian national territory, and the name ‘Friulano’ for commerce abroad.