Wine may contain various additives to control its flavor, color, or robustness, such as sulfites, egg white, or even sturgeon swim bladder.
For decades, the food sector has been adapting to a policy of transparency on the content of products, but the wine sector has enjoyed an exception in the EU.
The European Commission concluded in 2017 that “there were no objective reasons” for this exception and after many negotiations it was agreed that bottles of wine should be labeled with the content of additives from December 8.
The powerful wine industry managed to give producers the option to use QR codes, which must be scanned with a mobile phone by the consumer, instead of a label that lists the ingredients, as is the case with food.
«Wine is not made from a recipe. The grape evolves depending on the sun, the weather conditions… the ingredients are not the same from one harvest to another,” explains Ignacio Sánchez Recarte, general secretary of the European Committee of Wine Companies (CEEV).
A QR code implies that the customer must compare the information provided on their own, with their phone, instead of seeing it with the naked eye with a label.
“Can you imagine taking out your phone in the supermarket and scanning different QR codes to compare the additives in the wines, and then remembering them all to make your choice?” asks Olivier Paul-Morandini, from the Transparency for an Organic World association ( TO WA).
According to CEEV, which represents the sector in Brussels, digital labeling is the only way for all producers (some 2.2 million winegrowers in the EU in 2020, according to the Eurostat statistics office) to comply with the requirements.
“The European Commission understood the need to provide a level of flexibility that allows companies to communicate that information without disrupting our business,” explains Recarte.
On the other hand, the CEEV raised a complaint this month to the European Commission before the Irish plans to put health warnings on the labels of alcoholic beverages.
Organic winemakers claim that if a wine needs a QR code instead of a label, it is because the list of additives is excessive.
“An organic winemaker who uses a few ingredients hardly needs a label, while a conventional producer needs a dictionary,” says Julien Guillot, an organic winemaker in the Burgundy region of France.
QR codes and electronic labels are the typical methods to hide the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers in the agricultural sector, says the TOWA association.
“We don’t just need a list of ingredients. We should have a list with all the consequences of conventional agriculture, and how much it costs,” explained Paul-Morandini.
“Contamination of land, water… all this has a price paid by consumers and society,” he adds.
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© Agence France-Presse
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