Prosecco might be essentially the most well-known Italian wine, a byword for glowing good occasions and popping corks. However behind the fizz, Italy is in a serious dispute over whether or not Croatia can promote a premium dessert wine by the identify of prošek in shops throughout the EU.
Prošek is made out of white grapes grown primarily within the southern area of Dalmatia, utilizing a conventional course of that entails sun-drying them on straw mats earlier than they’re pressed. The wine sells at a premium as a result of it makes use of many extra grapes per bottle than many different dessert wines, however the identify has been banned throughout the EU since 2013 due to objections from the Italians. As a substitute, the wine trades underneath the identify Vino Dalmato.
Croatia has been battling to have this overturned ever since. To the fury of Italy, the European Fee has adopted up on a latest software by Croatia for prošek to be granted particular standing underneath the EU’s Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) guidelines. Prosecco has loved this standing since 2009, in addition to being protected underneath Italian regulation relationship again to 1969, and Italians say it’s “shameful” that Brussels is contemplating giving equal safety to prošek. So who will win?
Battle commences
Croatia tried to start out the registration process to acquire PDO standing for prošek in 2013, the 12 months it joined the EU. This was declined by the European Fee, which famous at the moment that the registration may battle with prosecco – although the 2 merchandise are utterly completely different.
The Balkan state is stressing that prošek is a part of the nation’s heritage, relationship again to earlier than Roman occasions. The Croatian wine has been historically produced domestically – made in line with household recipes. It is not uncommon that when kids are born in Croatia, the dad and mom maintain that 12 months’s prošek to be consumed on their offspring’s marriage ceremony day.
What prošek doesn’t have is the worldwide industrial model of prosecco, whose gross sales have been rising strongly despite the pandemic. There was a 17% improve in exports of prosecco within the first 4 months of 2021, with complete manufacturing of greater than 600 million bottles a 12 months.
Prosecco, too, is a part of a really lengthy custom. This dry glowing wine comes from north-eastern Italy, within the Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia areas, together with the world across the village of Prosecco (which gave the wine its identify). Within the outdated days it was also called pucinum, taking the identify of a close-by fort, and the Roman pure thinker Gaius Plinius Secundus wrote that the Roman empress Augusta attributed her longevity to ingesting no different wine however this one.
What the regulation says
Anybody granted a PDO enjoys sturdy safety throughout the EU, as they’re allowed to forestall others from utilizing and registering names which may confuse shoppers as to the true origin of the product. They will additionally stop different producers from exploiting the “evocative energy” of the model, together with by translating them into different languages.
If Italy can persuade the European Fee that the common EU client could imagine that prosěk is offered by the Italian producers of prosecco (and thus be confused), or that prosěk is successfully the translated Croatian time period for prosecco, it needs to be profitable in blocking Croatia’s software. Italy has now 60 days from the date Croatia’s software was submitted on September 22 to file a proper opposition.
It’s onerous to think about that permitting prosěk to be registered within the EU would do any harm to prosecco gross sales. But Italians worry that if the fee grants equal standing to prošek, it may set a harmful precedent that would depart room for a proliferation of overseas “Italian-sounding” merchandise, as famous by Italy’s agriculture minister, Stefano Patuanelli. Additionally, Paolo de Castro, an Italian member of the European parliament, has protested that “prosěk is nothing however the translation … of the identify ‘prosecco’”.
The fee has justified the Croatian software on the grounds that two similar-sounding names can each be protected in precept, as long as confusion may be prevented. That is arguably what Croatia will even level out through the proceedings, along with highlighting the centuries-old historical past of their wine.
Nonetheless, current case regulation may strengthen Italy’s probabilities of successful. In 2008, the European courtroom of justice (ECJ) dominated that using the time period parmesan by German cheesemakers for his or her model of the well-known onerous cheese was an unlawful evocative translation of Italy’s parmigiano. And only a few weeks in the past, the identical courtroom discovered {that a} tapas chain utilizing the time period champanillo – a Spanish expression for “little champagne” – would make shoppers imagine that the glowing wine on sale had a hyperlink to French champagne.
Brent Hofacker
One other EU case which Italy may depend on is the 2005 tokaji dispute. Tokaji is a Hungarian dessert wine, and the courtroom dominated that Italian winemakers from the Friuli Venezia Giulia area needed to cease utilizing the identify tocai for the dry white wine due to the potential for confusion.
Provided that Friuli Venezia Giulia is among the two essential areas that make prosecco, it will be ironic if one ruling towards one set of Italian winemakers now ended up benefiting some others.
The authors don’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or organisation that may profit from this text, and have disclosed no related affiliations past their educational appointment.