Examination of Witnesses (Questions 600
- 619)
WEDNESDAY 21 MARCH 2007
MR ROBERT BEARDSMORE, MR ROBERT LINDO, MR MICHAEL
ROBERTS AND MR OWEN ELIAS
Q600 Viscount Brookeborough:
The paper that we have here says that some maximum needs to be
set on enrichment, that is the UK vineyards?
Mr Beardsmore: I think the view that we take
on this is where are we starting from. What we are supporting
is the status quo, whether or not there should be some limit.
Nobody would want wine that was made if half the alcohol came
from sugar.
Q601 Viscount Brookeborough:
Would they know the difference?
Mr Beardsmore: At some point it is going to
affect the organoleptic characteristics. If you are putting in
only sugar, it comes up with nothing except alcohol at the end
of the day because it is fermented out. The point of what we were
saying is that these sorts of levels, although they are acceptable,
have been worked out over a number of years and the position at
the moment—which we support—is that you are allowed
to acidify, you are allowed to chaptalise within certain limits,
and I do not think it is unreasonable, if you are going to have
regulation at all, to have some upper limit on it. What they are
now suggesting, and it seems quite arbitrarily, is to alter it
in the one direction and not in the other. The one thing that
I think everybody would agree is important is the quality of the
wine at the end of it and what it tastes like, and in that respect
both the south of Europe and the north of Europe need these measures.
Of course, chaptalisation is done by huge areas of Europe, Bordeaux
and Burgundy; you would not have it without them. What we are
saying is that we support the status quo. This has been built
on for a number of years as to what reasonable levels are and
what they are doing at the moment is an arbitrary attack on one
end of the climate spectrum.
Q602 Viscount Brookeborough:
When they are acidifying it, are they using a natural process?
Mr Beardsmore: Acidification is usually done
with tartaric acid, which is as natural as sugar. It is extracted,
usually from grape must, it is the main source of tartaric acid.
Q603 Chairman:
It comes from grape must.
Mr Beardsmore: I believe it is almost the only
source of tartaric acid.
Q604 Viscount Brookeborough:
If you would like to see the subsidies go for the grape must especially,
would you be happy to see that and therefore more sugar being
used? What would be the effect on the overall market of not using
grapes?
Mr Beardsmore: Can I be clear? The price—
Q605 Viscount Brookeborough:
Yes, the price of sugar is cheaper; and, if there are no additional
funds to support grape must, then more people would move to sugar.
Would you be happy with that? And what would be the effect on
the overall market with removing grape must from the market?
Mr Beardsmore: I do not know, I do not have
the figures as to how much grape must is used.
Mr Elias: We have a limit at the moment of 3½%
in most years and what the EU was proposing was that that would
come down to 2½% and we do not necessarily think that is
a good idea. What they were also talking about was taking sugar
out of the chaptalisation process and replacing it with RCGM,
or grape must. At the moment we do use RCGM and sugar but RCGM
is six times more expensive than sugar. For example, at this harvest
we used 18 tonnes of sugar for chaptalisation. It cost us £10,000;
if we had done it with RCGM, it would have cost £52,000.
That is the level of difference that you get. You do get a little
bit more volume with RCGM, but that is the position at the moment.
Q606 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
That is an RCGM with subsidy?
Mr Elias: I do not know, we pay more in England
than they do in France, I am sure, apparently it is £2.50
a litre.
Q607 Chairman:
We had an interesting interchange with the Commission on this
point and they fell back on an argument that the definition of
wine was that it was a natural product of grape juice, full stop,
and that did not include the definition sugar-added. So, if you
want to sweeten it, you go back and use the must because you maintain
the natural cycle. What is your answer to that?
Mr Lindo: There is a difference between sweetening
and enrichment. Which did you mean?
Q608 Chairman:
I meant enrichment, yes.
Mr Lindo: All I can say is that it is called
chaptalisation after a Frenchman called Henry Chaptal, who invented
it and it has been traditional in France since wine-making began.
Q609 Chairman:
I am not arguing about that. I am arguing the Commission's point,
that the definition of wine that they are working from is that
it is a natural product made from grape juice.
Mr Lindo: We will have to increase those grubbing
up costs because not many of their areas do not reach it at the
moment. You cannot define something that exists and change the
definition of it.
Q610 Chairman:
They would then say that you can get the enrichment through must.
Mr Beardsmore: There are two issues on enrichment.
One is the issue of limiting how much you put in and the other
one is whether you should use a grape must. From our perspective
as an industry, it is quite clear to us which is the priority.
We do not want them to start eating away at, again, another regulation
as to whether you can add three and a half or two and a half or
two or whatever. As regards rectified grape must or using grape
must, there are some cost implications but they are very much
secondary; and, whilst nobody asks for cost increases, it would
not be the end of the world from the UK industry perspective.
When we first met with the Commission back in June they used that
same line of argument. They also said that chaptalisation, that
is using sugar as opposed to using grape must, was not an authorised
practice under the OIV. We have already said we are happy with
the OIV as being the gatekeepers of what you can and cannot do.
We eventually got through to the OIV to find out exactly what
the rules were, and it was quite interesting to note that it is
not an authorised practice to use sugar, so they have not put
it on their list as authorised. But, when the message came back
to us, we had a note from the OIV specifically saying, "We
do not have a view on the use of sugar". It may not be authorised
but neither was it unauthorised, and the email that came back
was absolutely clear, "We do not take a view on the issue
of chaptalising",—i.e. enriching with sugar as opposed
to grape must. If we move towards the OIV, we might not have a
problem with the European definition of wine.
Q611 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
Because this is quite clearly a matter that is going to be pretty
pertinent to the UK wine industry, have you made any efforts to
get allies in other Member States? We know for a fact that Hungary
is on your side, you just said that probably Northern France is;
and Germany is. The Commission, though—it was the one thing
they were really determined they were going to stamp out.
Mr Beardsmore: There is bound to be a bit of
a north-south divide for obvious reasons.
Q612 Lord Cameron of Dillington:
I suggest that you do a bit of diplomatic negotiation.
Mr Beardsmore: We were hoping it might go through
under the German Presidency.
Q613 Viscount Brookeborough:
Why do you think acidification has not been addressed by the Commission?
And who is behind the failure to address it?
Mr Beardsmore: I think they have a perfectly
reasonable argument that, in looking at surpluses, one of the
things you can do with surplus grape must is use it as the source
for enrichment. But it is a very isolated view that does not look
at the most important issue in terms of the longevity of the European
wine industry, which is the quality of the product that is being
produced and whether there is a market for it.
Q614 Chairman:
It is something to help out the Mediterranean producers?
Mr Beardsmore: You said it.
Q615 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
Can I ask you, is all of the wine that is produced commercially
in the UK what you would describe as good quality?
Mr Lindo: That is a very good question. We have
a quality scheme and you can choose to join the quality scheme,
which means that you can produce a quality wine which has been
tasted and tested by a chemist. Then, if you pass that and you
are eligible with a few other details, it gets labelled as English
vineyard quality wine.
Q616 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
That is what you would look for on the bottle? You would look
for English vineyard quality wine?
Mr Lindo: Yes. We have a regional wine category,
which has been manufactured to accommodate the grape varieties
that the EU will not allow us to put forward for quality wines.
It is nothing to do with the quality of the wine, it just that
they are not eligible for the list of quality wine grapes that
the EU allows us to use, so we have a regional wine. Now that
has a lower alcohol content in it, for some unknown reason, but
that is still tasty but it relies on a producer to provide an
analysis certificate of what is in it, an independent one. The
final thing is a thing called UK table wine, which has been avoided
like the plague; it is something which has either failed all of
those—
Mr Elias: That is just rubbish.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch: Finish
your point.
Q617 Chairman:
He has just realised he is in favour of distillation!
Mr Lindo: What I am saying is that, because
it has not passed a tasting test or independent analysis—by
right it may have done, the chap may be competent—there
is no proof, nobody has tasted it and said it is good, nobody
has analysed it and said it is good. You cannot put the grape
variety on, that is the main reason why, you are not even allowed
to put the vintage on, so no vintage, no grape variety, no tasting
and no analysis. Could I finish the rest of the answer perhaps,
and then come back to that. If you want to look at the quality,
then that is the quality echelon.
Q618 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
What percentage are in those roughly? I know you do not have a
vast army of people collecting data, but how many are in that
top quality?
Mr Beardsmore: If I could give you one or two
numbers, because we are the recognised industry body so we administer
the schemes—actually I administer the schemes! At the moment
I have got the production figures for 2005 in front of me, which
is the latest one we have from Defra. Total wine production—it
was a low year—12,800 hectolitres; and quality wine, 5,200
hectolitres roughly. The figure that I cannot give you is regional
wine, because regional wine is classed as a table wine, but it
is a table wine with Geographical Indication if you fit it into
the regulation. All I would say is that we get more regional wines
coming through the schemes, because we tend to do the tastings
together. We get more applications for regional wine than quality
wine, although, again, it does not tell you the volume of wine
it relates to. We think the vast majority is going through one
of the two schemes but they are not any actual figures for quality
wine with GI.
Q619 Baroness Jones of Whitchurch:
Sorry, you have lost me a little bit here, so there are GIs in
England?
Mr Beardsmore: Yes, they are mostly county names
at the regional level, or it is English vineyards or Welsh vineyards
at the quality level.
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