European Wine Laws: Prohibitive or Protective?

In The Pour, Eric Asimov made some interesting comments about the purpose and success of European beverage law - http://thepour.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/does-your-wine-need-viagra/.

A longer article is warranted on the subject, and I may take it up elsewhere, but I just want to take issue with what I perceive as Eric's confusion between market forces and the law. It might be true, to an extent, when Eric says, “European laws, which Americans are wont to sneer at as old-fashioned and restrictive, protect [winemaking] traditions.” But the law can only function to protect a tradition if the tradition is worth protecting. As we have seen in Montalcino, recently, and throughout France for decades (if not longer) market forces inevitably force some producers to abandon traditions in favor of making untraditional products. If the law functioned in the way Eric suggests, producers like Argiano, Antinori, etc. would never have made products the market demanded. That outcome is certainly worse than than the current confusion. Laws that stand in the way of market forces are generally inefficient, usually outdated, and often broken.

That is not to say that winemakers should abandon tradition in the name of the almighty dollar. It’s just to state what should be obvious: laws enacted solely to protect traditions will invariably be broken as some imaginative producers will invariably experiment with new grapes, new techniques, etc. How should consumers respond?

Well, if we acknowledge that it is pointless to require producers to resist market forces -- in the sense that we’ll never be able to stop producers from experimenting, from supplying demands, etc., and law enforcers will only ever be able to punish rule-breakers ipso facto, which is the most inefficient form of law enforcement possible -- one thing we can do is at the very least require truth in advertising. For example, we could certify traditionally made wines as Brunello and everything else as IGT. We could certify wines aged solely in oak barrels as “barrel aged.” We punish fraud in labelling with hefty fines. Now this might seem silly to some, but in fact, for better or worse, the US has a long history of requiring truth in food and alcoholic beverage labeling, whether we talk about cheese, meat, eggs, grains, wines or distilled spirits.

I think that what we really need to allow the market to function properly is an independent press to inform the public about problems when they occur, to evaluate wines and help consumers make fully informed decisions about a wide range of choices. Generally, the market works correctly. We should allow the law to function properly, as well, and not unduly penalize avant garde producers and their products.