Last August has been introduced the so called new European CMO reform (Common
Market Organization) concerning, as it is commonly known, the world of wine.
Despite the many debates this reform has arisen - in particular from the main
European wine making countries such as Italy, France and Spain - the reform is
now in force and therefore the laws of any single country must acknowledge the
new directive by adapting or updating the national laws in force. Of course,
also Italy will adopt this new reform and therefore they will proceed with the
appropriate changes and adaptations. There have been many points of this reform
to be cause of perplexity in the world of wine, including the possibility of
adding sugar to grape juice and the production of dealcoholized wine, that is by
removing part of the alcohol by means of specific procedures.
A reform that - in the words of the Italian ministry of agricultural politics
Mr. Luca Zaia - «Italy did not agree, although we had to acknowledge it» and
therefore it will require an adaptation of national laws regulating viticulture
and wine making. There are many, in the world of Italian wine, to believe Italy
did not so much, in the European parliament, to support its ideas and positions,
as opposed to what has been successful in doing France, for example. No matter
of the recriminations of the day after, the CMO reform is now in force and
then there is now only one thing to do and to which we cannot oppose - with the
exception of few points - that is to proceed with its acknowledgment. For this
reason, at the end of September, the Italian minister of agricultural politics
has issued his proposal for changing law n° 164 of February 10th, 1992 - in
short, law 164/1992 - the law being at the base and regulating viticulture and
wine making in Italy.
The plan of the minister is to have this law proposal approved within six
months, a period in which will be scheduled meetings with producers and the
associations involved in wine making. Law 164/1992 regulates the Italian quality
system, that is sets, among the many things, the essential points for
determining the areas of Denomination of Origin. This law, which has certainly
been important in developing and improving the quality of wines in Italy, has
always been subject of criticism by many producers. There are many to believe,
although it defines the fundamental criteria of quality according to law,
it indeed allows different applications with a broad possibility of adaptation
of the requisites according to the many circumstances and to make a perfectly
legal wine but however distant from the concept of objective quality. Like to
say once we have the law, we have to find a way to legally break it.
There certainly are many to remember the choice of some producers who, by seeing
their wines compared to others of evident lower quality, but belonging to the
same category of quality set by law, declassified their wines to a lower
legal quality. Many producers in the past decided to exclude their wines from
the categories DOC (Denominazione d'Origine Controllata, Denomination of
Controlled Origin) and DOCG (Denominazione d'Origine Controllata e
Garantita, Denomination of Controlled and Guaranteed Origin) and to include
them in the more generic and, according to a legal point of view, inferior IGT
(Indicazione Geografica Tipica, Typical Geographic Indication). Moreover,
many chose for their wines the lowest and the most generic of the categories
provided for the Italian quality system: Table Wines. It is not so difficult to
agree with these producers' decisions: by seeing the results the law allows to
get, it is frequently embarrassing to compare some wines having the legal
title of belonging to a certain denomination with other analogue wines and
belonging to the same denomination.
Let's make things clear: this is not a position contrary or against Italy and
its wine law, it simply is something proven by facts. And it should also be said
in other countries things, concerning the regulation and production of wine, is
certainly worst than Italy: in certain countries laws regulating the production
of wine are - in the best cases - useless, permissive and vague. This does not
however mean things cannot be improved for the real interest of quality, last
but not the least, of consumers (who, we should not forget, they are the ones
really making a market), instead of clearly favoring the commercial and
economical interests of producers and corporations, interests which are
legitimate and understandable. In case we consider the current list of wines and
areas belonging to denomination of quality in Italy (41 DOCGs, 316 DOCs, 120
IGTs) many of them are pretty disputable, they seem to be more a title
determined by an obscure and speculative political logic, instead of something
based on the real quality of the territory and its wine.
That we must safeguard traditions and typical wines of Italy, we all agree on
that, there is no doubt about this. Every region, every smallest area of this
country has traditional and typical wines and agricultural products. However,
this does not mean every tradition and every typical product implicitly
expresses quality. Anyway, quality is - just like morality and legality - first
of all, a presupposition consciously adopted by the ones who want to follow it,
the result and the awareness of a culture. A law, alone, will never set real
quality, but it however can define the fundamental factors which must be adopted
in order to get it. In the next months Italy will change its wine law by
adapting it to the new CMO reform and - like we said - a proposal has already
been released. We are sure the minister of agricultural politics will work in
the interest of Italy and the safeguarding of its wines. Anyway, as they are
working on that, why don't they make the law and the many production
disciplinary more concrete and less vague, by limiting the possibilities the
same old smart ones use in order to speculate on denominations and
against the interests of us all? Also this does mean working for quality, for
the safeguarding of traditions and typical products, concepts so dear to
Italians, most of the times in words only and not in facts.
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