Wine Law

500 WINE LAW Related to them are the provisions on the protection of rights and legal interests of an unspecified number of consumers and responsible vineyards and wineries engaged in producing viticulture and wine products. The interested parties may take legal actions while the Government agencies and officials are obliged to assist them in carrying out appropriate checks on the wine and viticulture legislation’s violations. Expert Advisory Boards affiliated with the federal or local legislative, and executive bodies may be created to study the possible socioeconomic consequences of legislative initiatives on the regulation of production and circulation of ethyl alcohol, alcoholic and alcohol-containing products, to implement the legislation and develop appropriate recommendations (art. 46). Regarding the fraudulent production mentioned in article 47, its inadmissibility is generally designated as the specific provisions for fighting it, with their systematical place in other legislative acts. Three are the main fraudulent realities – the falsified wine products, the unwholesome wine products and the counterfeit wine products –, and their fabrication, import and distribution on Russian territory are prohibited. The imported falsified wine products and unwholesome wine products are subject to destruction unless they are exported, the falsified wine products and unwholesome wine products of Russian provenance, as well as the counterfeit wine products, are to be destroyed. For the applicable sanctions in general, the Federal Law No. 468 refers to the responsibility in accordance with the specific federal legislation, whether it concerns the administrative penalties or the criminal punishments (art. 48). The last Chapter’s sole article (art. 49) contains the final and transitory provisions . The entry into force of the law was postponed for 26 June 2020, 180 days after its official publication. A three-year transition period has been fixed, in which the name “Russian wine” will apply not only to the wine completely made from grapes grown on the Russian Federation’s territory, as required by the new dispositions but also to the wine with added concentrated grape must or concentrated rectified grape must imported from abroad in percentage limited by the new law. This three-year period is peremptory, and it will definitively close the bleak time of awkward immobility for the Russian wine-related agriculture and industry. The new law is applicable ex nunc , except for the legal relations arisen before the day it enters into force but when the rights and obligations deriving from them take effect after the law has come into force 54 . 54 There is an oversight in the English translation of the US Department of Agriculture, cited above in note 41. The second sentence of article 49(5) should read: “This Federal Law with respect to the legal relations, which have arisen before [instead of after ] the day it enters into force, shall be applied to those rights and obligations that will arise after the present Federal Law comes into force.” (emphasis added).