Do wine merchants need organic certification?

Every wine merchant in Germany who sells organic wines over the internet needs organic certification.

According to Art. 28 (1) of the EU Organic Regulation (officially: EC Organic Basic Regulation No. 834/2007), every entrepreneur who produces, prepares, stores, imports from a non-EU country or places on the market products from organic production is "obliged, before placing them on the market [...] to notify his activity to the competent authorities of the Member State in which this activity is carried out" and to participate in an organic control system, i.e. to have his enterprise certified as organic. This therefore also applies to organic wine.

According to Art. 28 (2), retailers can only be exempted from the inspection obligation if they "sell products directly to final consumers or users" and "do not produce the products themselves, prepare them or store them in a place other than in connection with the point of sale or import such products from a third country or have such activities carried out by third parties". This means: Wine merchants are only exempt from organic certification if they sell their wines to end consumers exclusively in direct customer contact, i.e. exclusively in a real point of sale, i.e. a retail shop.

When selling via the internet, there is no direct customer contact in the sense of the regulation - an online shop is not a real, but a virtual point of sale. Therefore, the exemption does not apply here, so that wine merchants in Germany who operate online and mail-order businesses and have organic wines in their assortment need organic certification in any case; otherwise, there is a risk of costly warning letters. Further information can be found in the following magazine article: warning letters - Lack of organic certification of online wine merchants

Business Premium members of wein.plus have the opportunity to get organic certification unbureaucratically and at low cost through the cooperation partner ÖkoP. Details can be found in the wein.plus world of benefits for members: Facilitating organic certification