Wine labels and brands

I am writing in response to Raymond Camilleri's letter "Labels do matter" (September 10). While I am all in favour of tighter controls on both the production of local wines and the enforcement of labelling regulations and fully support the general point of his letter, which is to strive towards making all Maltese wines from Maltese grapes, I felt that his article may have been misleading, confusing and even incorrect in parts.

I hope to address these points below.

1. - "Forget labels and brands, drink what you like". While I cannot but agree with the recommendation to drink what one likes (or enjoys for that matter), I also believe that wine labels and brands do play a very important role for both the consumer and the wine producer.

Brand names help the consumer to more easily identify with a particular style and taste of wine that they like without necessarily going into the details of the particular blend of grape varieties making up such a wine.

Notwithstanding the possible presence of a recognisable brand name, the label remains of utmost importance to the consumer and should provide enough accurate information to allow him to make an informed choice on his purchase.

Thus, if it is a wine made in Malta from grapes imported from Italy it should, of course, clearly say so on the label. However, if it is made from a particular grape variety, say, Chardonnay, and made in a specified vintage year, should not the consumer also be informed of this?

Perhaps Mr Camilleri did not make this point very clear but, under the EU wine labelling regulations, such a wine "made in Malta from wine grapes imported from Italy" can only be described as a table wine.

Factual information on the (imported wine) grape variety used to make the wine and the mentioning of the vintage year it was made in, would not be allowed to be printed on the label.

This I believe would be to the detriment of the local consumer who will be denied information that has previously helped him to make more of an informed choice during the last 12 years or so.

While I understand and generally agree with the protective "spirit" of the EU law which only allows for quality wines to be made in the same region that the grapes were harvested, some leading local wine producers have been making generic varietal grape wine with these same wine grapes for the last 12 years or so, yet, we are told that these same wines are to lose all identity and be declassed to simple table wines under EU legislation.

They may not be the best wines in the world but they certainly helped towards improving the quality of local wine-making and have established a substantial growing local market over the years, albeit protected by government levies on imported wines.

2. - "Bona fide customers will only put their faith behind labelling regulations when labels effectively enable consumers to distinguish real wine from sugar wine and to identify wine made in Malta from wine made from imported grapes."

I cannot but agree wholeheartedly with the above statement. By definition, wine is the product obtained exclusively from the total or partial alcoholic fermentation of fresh grapes, whether or not crushed, or of grape must.

Apart from any enrichment within the authorised limits (described further on below), any deviation from the above would result in a product that cannot be defined as wine.

In other words, the addition of sugar beyond the prescribed authorised limits of enrichment and/or addition of water would lead to a fermented artificial product that cannot, and should not, be called wine.

Unfortunately, however, it appears that some products of this nature are still commercially sold locally under the description of wine. I cannot say how widespread this practice is, suffice to say that labelling alone will not help the consumer.

In this regard, what is required, to start with, is simply an official verification of the declared amount of grapes and musts processed into wine by each wine producer each year and subsequent reconciliation with the number of bottles of each wine produced.

Basically, a ton of grapes would give you around 950 +/- 50 bottles of 75cl each, so if a wine producer can only officially account for the processing of one ton of grapes he should only be allowed to sell 950 bottles +/- 50 of 75 cl each.

This is the basic first step required to be enforced to make every commercial wine producer publicly accountable for the quantities of wine produced.

The second and much more complicated step would then involve the qualitative accountability of the wines produced. That is to say that the wine producers would be obliged to keep much more detailed records, subject to official scrutiny, accounting for the use of every litre of wine produced, thus ensuring that what goes in the bottle matches what is said on the legally correct label - be it a description of wine made from locally-grown grapes or a wine made from imported wine grapes.

3. - "Many Maltese farmers will commit themselves to growing wine grapes in Malta only when they are convinced that EU labelling regulations are being fully enforced. Otherwise, they will continue to fear that their grapes will be shortchanged."

While I am not sure that I fully understand this statement, perhaps this was explained in the earlier paragraph on wine quality accountability.

The reality is that farmers are committing themselves to growing wine grapes in Malta because there is a great demand for such grapes and, besides being encouraged by the offer of very attractive government subsidies, they are in the enviable position where the market price of their grape produce for sale to the wine producers has skyrocketed upwards because of the demand.

Although this is to be expected, the obvious future repercussion for the local wine consumer is increased prices for wines made with locally-grown wine grapes.

4. - "Malta's large winemakers have anomalously secured from the authorities a 'temporary' derogation to use cheap sugar and imported grapes in wine production."

The business of the use or rather the abuse of sugar (or concentrated must) in winemaking has always aroused wild, passionate and sometimes misleading statements by various persons.

The fact of the matter is that the correction of the natural grape juice sugar content with either dry cane sugar or concentrated grape must (within clearly defined limits) is an authorised, oenological practice called "enrichment" which, where climatic conditions have made it necessary, is currently allowed throughout all the existing member states of the European Union as long as the grapes to be "enriched" are authorised wine grapes having reached a specified minimum natural alcoholic strength.

Having said this, it must be made clear that the defined maximum enrichment limits (as well as the material used for enrichment) differ, generally, according to the particular wine-growing zone:

All the EU member states are in fact, grouped into three wine-growing zones, with zone A covering the most northern states, zone B, and zone C covering the most southerly states.

Zone C is subdivided into zones CIa, CIb, CII, CIIIa and CIIIb.

Malta would make up part of zone CIIIb.

Broadly speaking, and where climatic conditions have made it necessary, the authorised enrichment practice of fresh grapes or grape must in fermentation allows for the following maximum limits in the increase in natural alcoholic strength by volume:

Zone A: 3.5% vol
Zone B: 2.5% vol
Zone C: 2.0% vol

While these are the imposed maximum limits allowed by the EU legislation, every regional authority within each of the individual member states of the European Union may specify detailed procedures and more restrictive limits within these maximum parameters.

Thus, for example, the regional authorities of individual member states may impose more restricted enrichment limits or even have no enrichment at all allowed for the regional quality wines produced such as certain "DOCG" wines from Italy or "AOC" wines from France.

The reference made to a "temporary derogation", I think refers to the allowance of an increased enrichment limit of up to three per cent vol (instead of two per cent vol) in the increase in natural alcoholic strength by volume allowed only and specifically for the local indigenous Maltese grapes Ghirgentina and Gellewza, which are generally known to reach a lower natural grape sugar content at maturity than the international wine grape varieties.

This derogation was proposed by Malta's Department of Agriculture to protect the heritage of our indigenous grape varieties and allow as much wine made from locally grown grapes as possible during the present ongoing developmental transition of the Maltese viticultural sector which would, hopefully, eventually produce enough locally grown quality wine grapes to satisfy both Mr Camilleri and the local market ingeneral.

Finally, the reference to obtaining a "temporary derogation" to use "cheap" imported grapes in wine production is totally misleading on two counts.

While it is true that the price of imported wine grapes varies widely depending on the type of wine grape and the region of origin, I think it is fair to say that none comes cheap and, in fact, many of the more widely known grape varieties are actually quite expensive and are used in making quality DOC wines in their region of origin.

There is no law in the EU legislation prohibiting the making of wine with imported wine grapes so long as they meet the minimum natural alcoholic strength of the zone of origin.

I hope the points I have covered will be reasonably clearly understood and not misinterpreted as my intention was to inform and not to attack or offend anyone.

Mr Tonna is an oenologist at Marsovin.