European Union's wine laws

European Union wine regulations are common legislation related to wine existing within the European Union (EU), the member states of which account for almost two-thirds of the world's wine production. These regulations form a part of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of EU, and regulate such things as the maximum vineyard surface allowed to individual EU member states, allowed winemaking practices and principles for wine classification and labelling. The wine regulations exist to regulate total production in order to combat overproduction of wine and to provide an underpinning to Protected designations of origin (PDOs), among other things. In a sense, the wine regulations therefore try to protect both the producer and the consumer.

The EU wine regulations, as a part of CAP, do not include regulations on age limits for buying or drinking alcohol, regulations on wine advertising or retailing and other aspects of national social or public health policies of the individual EU member states.

While a large bulk of the text of the regulations is concerned with winemaking practices and the like, much of the history of the EU wine regulations has been linked to the issue of market imbalances and overproduction of wine.

In the early days of the CAP, the wine sector of the then-European Economic Community (EEC) was in reasonable equilibrium for a rather short period of time. During this time, there were no regulations as to plantations and few interventions into the market, as this was not needed. However, the early post-World War II saw the introduction of many technological innovations within viticulture, which soon led to increased production, while the demand stayed constant. This resulted in a surplus of wine. The answer from EEC was to intervene in the market to make some guarantee as to sales, while still keeping the freedom to plant new vineyards, which aggravated rather than solved the problem of overproduction. While looking like a very illogical policy in hindsight, this was in keeping with the view that what the EEC was aiming to do was to balance variations in production from year to year.

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