While most of the food and drink sector has been forced to print ingredients and nutritional information on packaging for decades, the alcohol sector has long had a special exemption
While most of the food and drink sector in Europe has been forced to print ingredients and nutritional information on packaging for decades, the alcohol sector has long had a special exemption. Image: Shutterstock
European wines are finally being forced to reveal their ingredients to customers, but only on a website—not on the bottle. Environmental campaigners are unimpressed.
Wine can contain a wide array of additives to control taste, strength and appearance: sulfur, sugar, egg white, dried fish bladders, enzymes from a pig or cow pancreas, and a range of chemical compounds.
While most of the food and drink sector has been forced to print ingredients and nutritional information on packaging for decades, the alcohol sector has long had a special exemption.
In 2017, the European Commission concluded there was no "objective grounds" for this exception, and new rules—which come into force on December 8—require wines to reveal their contents.
But there is a twist. The wine industry was allowed to come up with their own method of doing so—and it decided to give vineyards the option of using QR codes that link to a website, thus keeping the ingredients off the bottles.