Wine Law

29 consumer shall be informed of the category of the product he is buying. Only, as mentioned in point 3.2., if the wine has a PDO or a PGI, the reference to the category of the grapevine product may be omitted: if the consumer buys a bottle of Champagne, Cava or Asti, he is expected to know that he is buying a bottle of wine, although we may wonder if he is aware of the wine being a sparkling or a semi-sparkling wine. Moreover, if the wine has a PDO or a PGI, the term protected designation of origin or protected geographical indication and the name of the protected designation of origin or the protected geographical indication shall appear on the label, unless the traditional term 52 is displayed on the label in accordance with the product specification. A “traditional term” means a term commonly used in a Member State to indicate that the wine product has a protected designation of origin or a protected geographical indication under Union or national law. Other examples are the production or ageing method or the quality, colour, type of place or a particular event linked to the history of the product with a protected designation of origin or a protected geographical indication. According to article 26 of Act No. 238, the definitions “designation of origin” and “geographical indication” of wine products are those set forth by Article 93 of Regulation No 1308/2013. Under article 28 53 , the PDOs (or DOP 54 in Italian) are classified as denominazioni di origine controllata e garantita (DOCG) and denominazioni di origine controllata (DOC). DOCG and DOC are the traditional specific terms referred to by articles 52 According to article 112(a) of Regulation (EC) No 1308/2009. 53 Although such a classification dates back to the Act of 10 February 1992, No. 164, referred to precisely as the new regulation on the designation of origin of wines. The threefold division provided for in the 1963 Decree was now translated into the concept of “ denominazione di origine dei vini ” (designation of origin of the wines), meaning the geographic name of a specific winegrowing area used to designate a well-known quality product, whose characteristics arose from the natural environment and human factors, and the concept of “ indicazione geografica tipica dei vini ” (typical geographical indication of the wines), which means “the geographic name of a zone used to designate the product arising from it”. The geographic name constituting the designation of origin or the typical geographical indication, and the other mentions reserved for specific wines are defined more clearly, and the lawmaker specifies that they cannot be used to designate products that are similar, or alternative, to wines, nor can they be used so as to engender, in the consumer, confusion in the identification of wine products. Accordingly, the Act of 1992 classifies the designations of origin and the typical geographical indications into a) controlled and guaranteed designations of origin (DOCG), b) controlled designations of origin (DOC) and c) typical geographical indication (IGT). This marked the beginning of the main subdivision between table wines ( vin de table , Tafelwein ) and typical geographical indication wines ( vin de pays, Landwein ) on the one side and, on the other side, wines with designation of origin ( vin à appellation d’origine , Wein mit Ursprungsbezeichnung ), which, only in Italy, continue to this day to be further subdivided into wines with protected designation of origin and wines with protected and guaranteed designation of origin. 54 Denominazione di Origine Protetta .