Wine, magnum bottles at risk with the EU regulation on packaging

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Wine runs the risk of having to say goodbye to magnum bottles, to the special formats so loved by collectors and simple wine lovers. Because to make matters worse, the anti-alcohol offensive that is causing so many worries to Italian producers also from the new EU regulation proposal which aims to amend the directive on packaging does not seem to come from anything good for Italian and European wine.

The producers’ alarm

This is the alarm that will be raised from the stage of Vinitaly in Verona on the afternoon of Monday 3 April in a meeting organized by Federvini and Confagricoltura. «One of the watchwords contained in the proposal for a regulation on packaging which is creating great concern in the world of wine – explains the director of Federvini, Vittorio Cino – is the term ‘standardisation’ which provides for a substantial uniformity of packaging in the various sectors . In wine we are moving towards single packaging which will be a 0.75 bottle with the least possible use of glass. This perspective risks putting special wine formats such as magnum bottles out of the game, destroying what is a fundamental marketing tool for wine. But, in the second place, this regulation also risks creating difficulties for those productions that have focused on characterizing bottles such as, for example, the famous Verdicchio amphora or the Chianti flask still in vogue on some markets”. But that’s not all. The progressive reduction of the glass content in view of the new mantra which is that of minimizing packaging risks putting the world of sparkling wines in serious difficulty. «For the classic method sparkling wine – adds Cino – so I am referring in Italy to Franciacorta but also to Trento Doc or the emerging Alta Langa, the bottle is not simply the container but it is also an instrument for refining the product which matures in the bottle. It is an important part of the production process. In addition, sparkling wine needs containers capable of maintaining the pressure due to the presence of carbon dioxide. The bottles of sparkling wine are heavier because of this because a greater thickness of the glass is needed which would otherwise risk breaking. All requirements that do not reconcile with the objective of making bottles lighter».

But the hidden pitfalls in the new packaging regulation do not only concern the goal of standardisation. «Another issue to pay attention to – added the director of Federvini – is that of reuse. The directive aims to set reuse objectives which are not at the country level but at the individual company level. How will the many Italian SMEs, strongly export oriented among other things, ensure the objectives of reuse of containers shipped to distant countries? The strong risk is that while the effects of the escalation of costs (of glass, raw materials, energy and transport) recorded in 2022 have not yet been reduced, the foundations are already being laid for a new flare-up in production costs of businesses. It is essential that amendments to the draft regulation are included during the discussion, otherwise there is a high risk of encountering new problems. Not to mention the risk, in the presence of such controversial rules, that there is a different application from country to country within the EU borders. Let’s hope that the institutions will take charge of it and be able to explain the risks for the Italian and European productive world in Brussels”.