In August 2014, the governments of the World Wine Trade Group (WWTG) produced the “Tbilisi Statement”, endorsing 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, 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 submitted to WWTG governments for consideration and the Group endorsed one of them (on the 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 Neuquen 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.
Principle #1: Avoiding unnecessary analyses.
Governments should establish regulatory limits that are based on risk, thereby avoiding unnecessary analyses.
• FIVS Regulating Winemaking Practice Additions in a Rapidly Evolving, Global Market
• FIVS Good Manufacturing Practices in Practical Terms
• FIVS/WWTG Microbiologically, Wine is a Low Risk Safety Risk Consumer Product (Also published here as an OIV Scientific Congress Oral Presentation)
• FIVS Certificates of Analysis and Wine Safety and FIVS Certificates of Analysis and Wine Authenticity
• FIVS Methanol in Wine (Also published here as an OIV Scientific Congress Oral Presentation)
• FIVS Risk Based Limit Setting Guidelines
Principle #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.
• FIVS-APACE, Additives and Processing Aid Compendium for Enology (password required)
• WWTG FIVS-Abridge Access Project (password required)
Principle #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.
• WWTG Mutual Acceptance Agreement
Principle #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.
• IWTS Harmonizing Reporting of Regulatory Limits in Wine Analysis via International System of Units
Principle #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.
• FIVS Methanol in Wine (Also published here as an OIV Scientific Congress Oral Presentation)
Principle #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.
• IWTS Harmonizing Expression of Measurement Results in Wine Analysis: Best Practices When Testing and Reporting Sugar in Wine (Also published here as an OIV Scientific Congress Oral Presentation)
Principle #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.
• APEC Wine Regulatory Forum Analytical Methods Compendium
Principle #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).
• FIVS Laboratory Accreditation
• FIVS Certificates of Analysis and Wine Safety and FIVS Certificates of Analysis and Wine Authenticity
Principle #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.
• APEC Wine Regulatory Forum Analytical Methods Compendium
Principle #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.
• IWTS Assessing Wine Authenticity: Establishing Criteria Necessary for Robust Wine Authenticity Databases
Principle #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.
• FIVS Certificates of Analysis and Wine Safety and FIVS Certificates of Analysis and Wine Authenticity