Requirements for Wine Labeling

On September 14, 2010, Law No. 26633 was published in the Official Gazette. It approves the Agreement of the World Wine Trade Group[1] on the Requirements for Wine Labeling signed in Canberra, Australia, on January 23, 2007.

The purpose of the Agreement is to agree on common labeling information and minimize unnecessary labeling-related trade barriers with the objective of facilitating international trade in wine among the Parties.

The main terms of the Agreement are the following:

a) Measures relating to labeling shall be transparent, non-discriminatory and adopted and applied in conformity with the Marrakesh Agreement of April, 15, 2004 of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

b) Each Party shall provide, in any circumstance in which wine labeling is regulated, that all information on a label shall be clear, specific, accurate, truthful, and not misleading to the consumer.

c) The labels shall contain mandatory information and each importing Party shall permit labels to contain information other than common mandatory information and national mandatory information consistent with its laws, regulations and requirements, including any prohibitions.

d) No Party shall require disclosure of enological practices on a label.

e) Each importing Party shall permit common mandatory information to be presented in any single field of vision (any part of the surface of a primary container) subject to the conditions of the Agreement and shall accept common mandatory information that appears outside of a single field of vision provided its laws, regulations and requirements have been satisfied.

f) Where an importing Party adopts or maintains for its market labeling rules in respect of common mandatory information that are less restrictive than the rules specified in the Agreement, nothing in the Agreement shall allow the Parties to prevent exporters exporting to that market from labeling in accordance with the importing Party’s rules.

g) An importing Party may require that common mandatory information appear in one or two of the languages in official use in the territory of that Party as provided for in its laws. Each importing Party may require that where common mandatory information is presented in more than one language the information presented in those languages is consistent and not contradictory.

h) Each importing Party may require that common mandatory information be written or set out legibly and clearly so as to afford a distinct contrast to the background.

i) The Agreement also states the type size of common mandatory information.

j) Nothing in the Agreement shall prevent an importing Party from requiring national mandatory information to be specified on the primary container.

k) Regarding the common mandatory information each importing Party shall permit country of origin information to be presented in the form of “product of”, “wine of” or a similar phrase, or the name of the country of origin, used as either an adjective of a noun in conjunction with the word “wine”.

l) Labeling information regarding multi-country blends that may be required by an importing Party shall be treated as national mandatory information.

m) Each importing Party shall permit the use of the term “wine” as the product name and may require further information on labels concerning the type, category, class or classification of the wine as national mandatory information.

n) Each Party shall permit wine to be labeled as icewine, ice wine, ice-wine, or similar variation thereof, only if that wine is made exclusively from grapes naturally frozen on the vine.

o) The Parties shall continue to work on matters concerning the facilitation of trade in wine and such other matters as may be agreed among the Parties.

p) The Parties shall establish a Council to manage the Agreement.

 

 

 

 

 

[1] The World Wine Trade Group is an informal association of national representatives of wine producing countries interested in participating in networking and information sharing to provide better access to international wine markets.