In August 2014, the governments of the World Wine Trade Group produced the “Tbilisi Statement”, in which they endorsed a set of good regulatory practice principles for wine. It was the first agreement of its kind among governments, with the potential to have significant trade-facilitating impacts.
Shortly after, members of the FIVS Scientific and Technical Committee and other groups, began working on a series of technical documents related to several of the Principles of the Tbilisi Statement to create guidance illustrating how practical application might take place. Some of these papers have been presented at the APEC Wine Regulatory Forum and the WWTG governments endorsed the paper on microbiological safety of wine. In addition, to expand familiarity with the concepts involved, the principles (in the form endorsed by FIVS) and two of the implementation papers have been presented at the OIV Scientific Congress and International Wine Technical Summit the over the last few years.
We are happy to report this activity is ongoing. The WWTG endorsed a new set of principles in Cape Town in 2017 and two more in Neuquén in 2018. More technical implementation papers are being produced by the FIVS Scientific and Technical Committee and considered within the International Wine Technical Summit. Accordingly, we envisage that this tool will be regularly updated and will comprise a more and more significant body of work on the sound regulation of wine from a technical perspective.
See how these principles have guided regulation and technical work.
Tbilisi Statement on Analytical Methodology and Regulatory Limits on Constituents and Potential Contaminants in Wine (2014)
1. Avoiding unnecessary analyses. Governments should establish regulatory limits that are based on risk, thereby avoiding unnecessary analysis.
2. Relevant standards. In addition to considering relevant standards from international standards setting bodies, in the context of a country’s WTO obligations, Governments should also consider work done by WWTG participants when establishing new regulatory limits.
3. Regulatory cooperation. Governments should seek cooperation in approaches to regulatory limits where it is feasible to do so and where there is no scientific or other legitimate justification for national or regional differences. Cooperation may be achieved by various means, including but not limited to the adoption of precisely the same provisions, mutual acceptance of provisions, or establishment of appropriate tolerances.
4. Common systems of units. Governments should, where feasible and appropriate, adopt a common system of scientific units for expressing regulatory limits relating to wine.
5. Expression of regulatory limits. Governments should express regulatory limits relating to wine on a “per unit volume of wine” basis rather than a “per unit volume of alcohol” basis.
6. Harmonization of results expressions. Governments should adopt a common way of expressing analytical results in their rules, regulations, and requirements, where this is done in relation to a single wine constituent, e.g., for total acidity.
7. Analytical levels. When governments implement limits for analytical levels in relation to wine, they should specify the method by which compliance with those limits is confirmed, and should make those limits and methods publicly available.
8. Accreditation. Governments should ensure that the analyses of wine that they require to demonstrate compliance with regulatory limits are undertaken by accredited laboratories complying with international standards (or overseen by certified analysts).
9. Validation of analytical methods. Governments should ensure that, for wine compliance purposes, laboratories use analytical methods that are validated for wine analyses, and that the laboratories are proficient in the use of those methods.
10. Authentic samples. Where wine authentication is deemed essential to prevent counterfeit or misleading practices, governments should compare test samples against a sufficiently comprehensive database of authentic samples to avoid miscategorizing legitimate samples as fraudulent.
11. Measurement uncertainty. Governments should ensure that laboratories provide information on measurement uncertainty regarding their analytical results. Governments should take into account such measurement uncertainty information when interpreting analytical results.
World Wine Trade Group Cape Town Statement on Regulatory Principles for Wine (2017)
World Wine Trade Group Governments endorse the following regulatory principles for wine. These regulatory principles for wine should be read in conjunction with the WWTG Tbilisi Statement on Analytical Methodology and Regulatory Limits on Constituents and Potential Contaminants in Wine (2014).
1. Communication on enforcement activity. Regulators in exporting and importing countries should, in accordance with applicable laws and regulations, ensure they communicate with one another promptly when enforcement activity is being taken for wine in international trade. Governments should seek to establish reliable means for such communication in advance.
2. Limits of detection. Where appropriate, when an analytical result for a substance in wine is reported as being below the limit of detection for a method, this should not be interpreted by Governments as indicating some presence of the substance.
3. Expiration date labelling. In the light of product characteristics, Governments should exempt standard wine from production or manufacture date, expiration date, minimum durability date, or sell-by date labelling requirements, unless a minimum durability date or expiration date is required by applicable laws and regulations because of the packaging or container (for example, bag-in-box wines or individual serving size wines).
4. Applying wine-specific limits. In the absence of specific regulatory levels or limits for a particular substance (whether adventitious or naturally occurring) in wine, or where a government is considering establishing such a level or a limit, each substance should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis taking into consideration relevant information such as levels of the substance in the wine, amount of wine consumed and toxicological information about the substance.
World Wine Trade Group Neuquén Regulatory Principles (NOvember 16, 2018)
World Wine Trade Group Governments endorse the following additional regulatory principles for wine, to be read in conjunction with the WWTG Tbilisi Statement on Analytical Methodology and Regulatory Limits on Constituents and Potential Contaminants in Wine (2014) and the WWTG Cape Town Statement on Regulatory Principles for Wine (2017):
1. Harmonization of references: When appropriate and in accordance with applicable laws and regulations, Governments should refer to processing aids and additives using an approach that minimizes or eliminates the possibility of confusion due to the existence of synonyms for those substances.
2. Presence of non-pesticide substances in wine: Presence of non-pesticide substances in wine: Sale of a wine should not generally be restricted because of the presence of a naturally occurring substance (i.e., other than a pesticide or food additive) if the substance is present in the wine:
at a level that does not present a public health or safety concern; and
at or below levels that may be found in wines from the same origin produced in accordance with good agricultural practice and good oenological practice.