Wine Law

488 WINE LAW The first-ever law on the viticulture in Russia was adopted in 1914, shortly before the collapse of the empire. Despite the parsimonious wording, its main merit was to create the formal basis for the respect of genuine wine production through regular control and law enforcement 9 . In 1902, the Viticulture and Winemaking Committee, established in the previous year, convened the first Congress of Winegrowers and Winemakers with representatives from all the interested regions 10 . The 1914 law attributed this Committee and its subsidiaries the control of activities, and the viticultural guild was consolidated. Still, the short-lived first era of Russian winemaking had the time to receive some international awards, with the grandest being the 1900 “ Grand Prix de Champagne ”, awarded at the Universal Exposition in Paris to the founder of the Crimean wine industry, prince Lev Galitzine 11 . A century later, the vicissitudes recall the same necessity for a new legal framework aimed at reestablishing modern Russian viticulture, a process initiated with Federal Law No. 171-FZ of 22 November 1995, on the state regulation of production and turnover of ethyl alcohol, alcoholic and alcohol- -containing products, and concerning the restriction on the consumption of alcoholic products. Its text dealt with wine and wine-related products, amid all the other alcoholic drinks, with wine being defined in a 1999 amendment as the “ alcoholic products produced from wine materials, […] with ethyl alcohol being equal to up to 22 per cent by volume in the finished product” 12 . The need for a special legislation was in the air, and the public discussion went on for years. 9 Source : http://rusvina.ru/wineopedia/spravka/index.php?SECTION_ID=8&ELEMENT_ID=631. 10 Source : https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/selskohozyaystvennye-obschestvennye-organizatsii-v- poiskah-putey-preodoleniya-agroekonomicheskoy-otstalosti-na-donu-i-severnom/viewer. 11 Source : https://www.austinwineguy.com/awg-blog/can-you-name-either-the-vineyard-winemaker- year-or-even-the-region-that-beat-the-french-in-paris-for-the-first-time-at-a-judged-wine-tasting. 12 Art. 2(11), Federal Law No. 171-FZ; available in : https://cis-legislation.com/document.fwx?rgn=1612.