November
10, 2008
Prosecco:
a Call to Action and a Return to Origin
Italian Wine
& Appellations
Prosecco, Friuli-Venezia
Giulia
November 10th
To protect the much loved and popular Prosecco from imitation,
Italian authorities and producers alike are coming together
to push for a new law that would legally associate the wine
to its original birth place: Prosecco, a town near the city
of Trieste in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, where the varietal
has been cultivated since ancient Roman times. Proponents
of the law believe that having the wine associated to a
specific geographic location would guarantee its protection
and put a stop to imitations.
Recent years have shown the growing popularity of Prosecco,
with sales reaching more than $463 millions, prompting other
countries in the new world and in Eastern Europe, such as
Romania, to invest in the planting of the varietal which
in a few years could potentially mean that Prosecco other
than from Italy will enter into the international market.
As a response to this threat, Italian producers, among which
Zonin, are appealing to regional and state authorities to
push for the new DOC law prior to the August 2009 deadline,
when new EU laws will come into effect overwriting the individual
member countries' existing appellation systems.
What Zonin and others are urging authorities to do is to
create a new DOC law for Prosecco that would include areas
of production in both the Veneto
and Friuli Venezia Giulia regions, while elevating the existing
DOC associated with the Conegliano di Valdobbiadene area
of Veneto (including its subzone of Superiore di Cartizze)
to DOCG status, due to its superior quality of production.
The proposed new law has already received objections from
other producers of Prosecco, but Zonin and its collaborators
hope that others will see the larger picture and eventually
join them in protecting the native varietal. Proponents
of the new law hope that others will join them in realizing
that not pushing for an official law to protect the name
and origin of Prosecco will allow the already eminent threat
of productions from new world countries, with larger production
abilities that Italy, to become a reality and, therefore,
cause future profit losses for all involved.
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