The only thing prošek and prosecco wines have in common is the admittedly similar name,
as they differ in almost all their organoleptic qualities and characteristics.
Still, the Italians adopted a very harsh stance against the granting of
'traditional term' status to Croatian sweet wine,
as its name evokes Italian bubbly spumante So what’s all the fuss about?
The prosecco v. prosek issue is not much known outside of
Italy where it made the front page of newspapers.
Recently Italian MEPs even pushed for
a parliamentary hearing on the topic,
while Italy’s agriculture Stefano Patuanelli
called a press conference saying that prosek represents an enormous risk that Italy is running in general as a country.
Let’s start with the differences. Prosecco is the iconic Italian
sparkling or semi-sparkling wine produced
in the hills between the towns of Conegliano and Valdobbiàdene,
while prošek is produced in the southern area of Dalmatia and
it is made using dried wine grapes
in the passito method, it’s basically a dessert wine.
Put it this way,
you don't need a sommelier to understand they belong to two different wine families they only share
a very similar name.
In 2013, Croatia submitted an application for protecting its local wine but at the time
all requests were put on hold and taken up again in 2019. The Commission is now starting to process
pending files, including the ‘prošek’ one.
Croatian request has always been
legally problematic due to the protected designation of origin or PDO, protection granted to
Italy's Prosecco which explains why the term prosek was not part of
Zagreb’s Accession Treaty when Croatia joined the EU.
Contrary to what has been reported in the press,
the Croatian application is for protecting the traditional term, which is used to convey some
information to consumers
about a certain description of product characteristics, like the words ‘tawny’
and ‘ruby’ used for Porto wines or ‘vin de pays‘ or ‘grand cru‘ for French wines.
However, traditional term is a mild form of protection which is NOT part of the
EU's geographical indications (GIs) framework – which is the one that guarantees extremely high
protection for European foodstuff
Just to give you a taste of how powerful this
protection is: in a landmark ruling in 2019, the EU's Top Court stated as unlawful the use of the
literary character Don Quixote de La Mancha (!) for the promotion of a certain cheese as it
“evoked” the geographical area with which the PDO manchego cheese is associated.
And there is also a precedent involving Italy with the Tokai wine
from Italy’s region Friuli, whose name was banned due to its excessive similarity to the well-known
Hungarian Tokaji, another PDO wine.
So, at what point of the process are we?
The Commission is now examining the objections to the Croatian application made by the interested
parties, namely the Italian government and the associations of producers.
The Commission will take a final decision on the basis of
all available information. What to expect as an outcome? Well,
Croatian winemakers have so far extended an olive branch showing willingness to compromise by asking
to add the adjective ‘Dalmatian’ to the term ‘prošek’ in order to further emphasise the
difference from Italian prosecco.
At the same time, it is very unlikely that Italy’s not going to win this one – and not only just because
after the Eurovision and the Euros is difficult to win
something against Italy in this stellar 2021.
But also because the Commission would probably not risk putting in danger
the whole GI system, which is one of the EU’s strongest assets, by limiting the protection to prosecco and not recognizing the
evocation aspect in the present case.
However, it is still possible that the Commission decides to back Croatia’s stance saying that
consumers cannot be confused by the very similar names as they are two different products.
Let's see if there will be a compromise between the two countries and the Commission
in the end.
In our opinion they are bot delicious
and we are going to enjoy them, with the rest of the newsroom, once this video is over. Cheers!