UK Wine Producers Toast Lifting of Planting Ban

The EU Council has agreed to a permanent exclusion of the UK from the planting rights regime.

This planting restriction had been the greatest challenge to the continued development of the wine industry in the UK, which has been growing very successfully over many years. Under this EU planting ban, UK wine producers would have had to stop any further planting once production exceeded 3.3million bottles (25,000 hectolitres), averaged over 5 years. Although the EU Commission wanted to get rid of the planting restrictions, they were forced to compromise and extend the ban to 2015, in order to get other reforms through, which are designed to make EU production more competitive.

The Planting Ban was introduced in the EU in 1999 in response to the over production of poor quality wine in the larger member state producing countries which resulted in the infamous ‘wine lake’. The current EU Wine Reform, introduced by EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, aims to revive the languishing European wine industry. Meanwhile, the UK has been steadily producing more and more quality wine, especially within the sparkling wine sector, and demand from both domestic and overseas markets has never been higher. The UK’s representative industry body, the UK Vineyards Association (UKVA), therefore argued that capping the expansion of this vibrant industry, which is completely unsubsidised, would fly in the face of the new Common Agricultural Policy.

EU wine reform amendments have also lifted bans on unlisted grape varieties, as well as the listing of grape varieties and vintage on table wine labels. These reform measures have been put in place to increase the competitiveness of European wines in the face of stiff competition from New World producers.