You know what’s in your can of Coca-Cola. In your glass of wine, on the other hand, opacity dominates. This exception will soon be over. The composition of wine produced from this Friday and sold in the European Union must now be displayed. This display will be visible on the label or via a QR code to scan with your smartphone.
Wine has long benefited from an exemption, only allergenic ingredients such as sulphites having to be mentioned. But the European Union has issued new rules applying to all wines produced from December 8. The list of ingredients as well as nutritional information must now be displayed.
For non-sparkling wines, all those which have already achieved the required characteristics are not concerned, it will therefore rather be for the next harvests.
For sparkling wines like champagne, those from the 2023 harvest and going through a second fermentation after December 8 will have to obey the new rules.
Winemakers can choose to display the information on the label or via a QR code linking to a website. This is the option that Vincent Cuillier, champagne producer, chose. “We tried to display everything on the labels, it really takes up too much space,” he explained. “We would have to change all the machines, the coverings, there are too many resources at the moment. »
Some winegrowers believe that QR codes favor winegrowers using a lot of added products, while organic or biodynamic wines make little use of them and can therefore easily display all the ingredients on a label.
“We are very favorable to transparency on products” and “we considered that it was important to switch to this regulation in a modern way”, defended Anne Haller, director of the Vignerons coopacteurs who pushed for the digital labeling is possible.