Analysis of regulatory framework and standards applied to organic wine-making in Europe

Because wines (of grapes) were excluded from the scope of EC Regulation 2092/91 (annex 6, concerning processing organic food, does not apply to wine) concerning organic farming, up till now there is no legal definition for organic wines at European level, but only rules for organic grapes production. This project: ORWINE, is aiming to help the UE commission to develop a legislative framework for the transformation of organic grapes into organic wine. This would allow replacing the current definition “wine made from organically grown grapes ” by “organic wines”. One of the first tasks of this project is a description of the regulatory framework applied to EU organic wine-making. Legal public and private standards for wine processing are taken in consideration and compared, in order to see convergences and divergences between different standards and identify the main important issues that need to be dealt with by a future European regulation for organic wines making