A couple of months ago the United States signed a pact with the European Union to restrict the use of geographic names on their wine labels.
It looks as though Australia is close to a similar deal whereby geographic names such as port and tokay are going to be banned from next year. This mainly impacts fortified winemakers as this new pact is in addition to the agreement with France that we already signed in 1994, that restricted most table wine names such as Champagne, Chablis and Burgundy.
I have seen some fortified wineries pre-empting this move by slowly phasing out these geographic names over the past couple of years. Seppelt is one example and at a recent masterclass, the new names were in effect such as “DP 117 Barossa Valley Fino” instead of “DP 117 Sherry” and “DP 90 Rare Barossa Valley Tawny” instead of “DP 90 Rare Barossa Valley Tawny Port”
I don’t think this is going to prove to be a major problem for our wineries, they were not happy about giving up Champange or Burgundy either, but labelling with a grape name rather than a style name has actually been of great benefit to our industry I believe. It set us apart from the old world makers and made things more consumer-friendly.
As long as our fortified winemakers can agree to a standard set of new names to use for their wines, I think we might see similar positive effects as we would now have a point of difference and uniqueness against the old world producers.
Winemakers in the US have been told that if they are currently making a product called “Port” they will be allowed to continue to use that name. Perhaps this same agreement will be in the Aussie treaty.
Kind of a shame to give up some of the traditional names… one hopes the trade negotiators got something good in return.