No-alcohol wines, red tape stops Italian dealerships

Often in Italia we rejoice at the approval of a law that introduces sector regulations. Only to then realise that from the passing of the framework of regulations to the actual start-up of activities is not a detail but a real journey. This is what wine producers who want to start up the production of dealcoholised wine on an industrial scale are experiencing.

The interministerial decree that was supposed to sanction the go-ahead for the production in Italy of partially and totally dealcoholised wine (in the past, producers had to go abroad for dealcoholisation operations) came at the end of last December. The measure does not require implementing decrees, but provides for the territorial offices of the Customs Agency to issue the relevant production authorisations. The decree also set a production threshold of one thousand hectolitres of dealcoholised wine in order to distinguish those who, above that threshold, qualify as 'industrial-sized plants'.

'When you want to start a plant,' they explain to Federvini, 'depending on whether you are above or below 1,000 hectolitres of production, you have to update your tax licence. All wineries that export have a licence because they have to fall under the Ead (Electronic accompanying document) system, which is the document that accompanies alcoholic products subject to excise duty. Wine in Italia has zero excise duty, but if you export for example to France it has positive excise duty and therefore if you ship it across the Alps you have to have the product accompanied by Ead. All wineries that export are registered by the Customs Agency and if you have a tax warehouse licence, you also have access to Emcs which is the EU computer system that allows you to issue the Ead'.

Basically, all those who want to start producing dealcoholised wine have to update their licence from wine to ethyl alcohol. A preliminary investigation must be carried out at the Customs Agency and its territorial offices, which must make an inspection after which they issue the update of the tax licence and the authorisation to dealcolare. An investigation that takes time because it is part of a new procedure. 'We understand the operators' nervousness especially because in many cases they have been waiting at least two years to start production,' they say from Federvini.

'The implementing decree was issued last December,' added the secretary general of the Italian Wine Union, Paolo Castelletti, 'and to date there is not a single authorised dealcoholisation plant in Italia. There are three on the launching pad. Two in the province of Treviso and one in Puglia but, I repeat, not even one authorised to date'. The practice is complex and also suffers from the fact that producers are not used to interfacing with the Customs Agency.