Slow Wine 2023 will open the conversation on the future of PDOs and Tasting Commissions

The Special Slow Wine 2023 awards of the Slow Food Wine Guide, which "gives a voice to good, clean and fair winemakers", was presented in Milan, with a clear message, “making wine is an agricultural act, it means taking care of the territory and the communities that live within it”. The Young Winemaker Award went to Gloria Mayr of the Nusserhof - Heinrich Mayr Winery in Bolzano, because she is "a bulwark of resistance to urbanization and the homologation of wines and tastes"; the Award for Sustainable Viticulture went to Heydi Bonanini at the helm of Cantina Possa in Rio Maggiore, in Liguria and her vineyards perched on walls overlooking the sea, which have consistently been cultivated herbicide and pesticide free and the Lifetime Achievement Award went to Emidio Pepe, who since 1964 has led one of the Abruzzi wine brands, because he has adopted "an agricultural model rooted in the purest Abruzzi farming tradition, based on absolute respect for the land, as well as protecting biodiversity and craftsmanship". The launch of the guide, following the presentation and tastings at Superstudio Più, was also an opportunity to open “an ongoing debate concerning, on the one hand, the Tasting Commissions’, which assign the DOC and DOCG, rejections of very good wines having stylistic characteristics that do not adhere perfectly to the regulations. And, on the other hand, more and more high quality wine producers are choosing to give up, regardless of DOC and DOCG, promoting their wings as TGI, if not table wine”, explained a note from Slow Wine.
“The risk is stylistic homologation. Undoubtedly, the Commission’s job is to guarantee the safety and quality of the wines, but the backdrop is the child of the Nineteen Eighties, when wines were objectively not as good as they are today”, Angelo Peretti, director of the Chiaretto and Bardolino Consortium, said, who has proposed a threefold solution, “expand the Tasting Commissions, bring more winemakers into the Commissions, broaden the parameters as much as possible to accommodate more stylistic differences and enhance identities”. “We as tasters look for the differences both in the territory and in the style. Diversity is a wealth for the denomination that producers and consortiums must promote”, the journalist, Jacopo Cossater echoed.
“Eighty percent of wines exported outside the European Union have a Designation of Origin. The DOC and DOCG value is therefore very high, and it is very important to maintain them. However, they need to be rejuvenated, thereby leaving greater freedom to the producers, and assigning, as in the French model, greater responsibility to them. It is also essential to start a more rapid adaptation of denominations, because climate change will lead to changes in managing wineries”, Matilde Poggi, president of the European Confederation of Independent Winegrowers (CEVI), emphasized. “We are very concerned about transferring competences on denominations from the Agriculture Commission to the European office that deals with intellectual property. This means that the DOCs would be considered private brands; but this is not the case, and cannot be the case because DOCs and DOCGs are collective assets that defend collective interests. In addition, they must have a strong connection with the agriculture and agronomic practices of the territory. Instead, this passage would mean that the denominations will be managed by those who know absolutely nothing about agriculture”, Poggi concluded. This is an important and open topic to be discussed, and one of the many as the curator, Giancarlo Gariglio, told WineNews recently, at the center of a Guide that is not only wine criticism.
“We tell the story of Italian wine, thanks to the 200 collaborators who allow us to map the entire Peninsula, and almost of all”, Giancarlo Gariglio, curator of the Slow Wine Guide and head of the Slow Wine Coalition, underlined, “to discover new companies in harmony with the Slow Food philosophy. As a matter of fact, in this 13th edition, out of 1957, we have included 110 new entries. Furthermore, there are 379 videos accessible by QR Code, which gives our readers the opportunity to experience visiting our collaborators. The films bear witness to this year’s main theme: climate change and drought. And the winegrowers have responded, in random order, describing their experience. It is not however, possible to entrust this critical challenge to the producers, so we want to appeal to the institutions to support scientific research in finding suitable solutions and technologies. Returning to the Guide, instead, over 56% of the companies are organic, proving not only the winemakers’ profound awareness but also that organic wine is good and doable, an intuition that the Guide has had since the beginning, and has confirmed it is a growing trend over these 13 editions. An interesting fact is the number of table wines; that is, those wines of highest quality at an excellent quality / price ratio. Due to increases in costs along the entire supply chain, there are fewer and fewer of these wines. I would like to close by thanking Fabio Giavedoni, who was my Guide brother until 2021, and together we took care of the volume. Now, instead, at my side there are the deputy curators Paolo Camozzi, Jonathan Gebser, Federica Randazzo and Gabriele Rosso”. “In the 2023 Guide we rediscovered the theme of regeneration, which was addressed recently in Turin, during the latest edition of Terra Madre. We have found it thanks to the numerous winemakers who work their land from every angle, and have a multifunctional and modern vision of their company”, Federico Varazi, vice president of Slow Food Italy, said. And, from Milan, Slow Wine has launched the appointment in Bologna, of Slow Wine Fair, from 26 to 28 February 26-28, 2023, organized by BolognaFiere and Sana, the International Exhibition of Organic and Natural, the artistic direction by Slow Food. “We are very happy about our partnership with Slow Food, which will have a large following and will be the first event of the year on Italy’s wine calendar. In this second edition, among the novelties, there will be spirits and ideas on sustainable technologies, essential for the ecological transition in agriculture”, Domenico Lunghi, coordinator of BolognaFiere events, said. The Slow Wine Fair at its debut in 2022, and despite the challenges in that period, attracted over 6.000 enthusiasts, buyers and professionals to Fiera Bologna, who tasted more than 2.300 wines and got to know 542 wineries (half of which were certified organic or biodynamic), coming from 20 countries around the world and from all of the Italian regions.