Wine Law

14 2.2.2. Wine geographical indications It might be necessary now to discuss briefly the geographical indication in the wine industry, defined by means of a set of features that differ greatly from the ones discussed above. It is defined in the current Regulation 1308/2013, in article 93.1.b as follows: “an indication referring to a region, a specific place or, in exceptional and duly justifiable cases, a country, used to describe a product referred to in Article 92(1) fulfilling the following requirements: i) it possesses a specific quality, reputation or other characteristics attributable to that geographical origin; ii) at least 85 % of the grapes used for its production come exclusively from that geographical area; iii) its production takes place in that geographical area; and iv) it is obtained from vine varieties belonging to Vitis vinifera or a cross between the Vitis vinifera species and other species of the genus Vitis ”. For the sake of a more meaningful discussion, we will contrast the above definition with both the concept of geographical indication of agricultural products and foodstuffs as articulated by the horizontal Regulation and the wine designation of origin that the European law contains in the previous paragraph within the same article 93.1. Regulation No. 479/2008 defined a concept of wine geographical indication — which was passed onto Regulation No. 1308/2013 — far removed from that which was established the horizontal Regulations that came before it in 1992 and 2005 with the aim of covering a wide spectrum of notions. The really conflicting wording may not be the substitution of “a specific quality” — which characterises designations of origin — for “quality”; nor is it the requirement of a specific vine variety. The great leap is in the fact that the “general” concept of geographical indication does not require — as we have just discussed — that any of the production stages should be necessarily carried out in the geographical area defined by the indication, whereas wine indications do stipulate that