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The Italian Central Inspectorate for Quality and Fraud Prevention ICQRF has presented its annual report for 2021. With 19,628 inspections in the wine sector, it carried out almost one third of all inspections in the food sector. The inspectors found irregularities in as many as 18 percent of the businesses and 11 percent of the wines. In addition, they confiscated wines worth 7.3 billion euros. Most of the complaints concerned bottlings of table wines that were labelled with false designations for DOC and IGT wines, often also indicating the grape variety and the vintage.
The other cases concerned the fraudulent marketing of PDO and PGI wines that did not meet the requirements of the respective production regulations; in addition, adulteration of wine products by watering and/or sugaring;. Furthermore, the ICQRF objected to wines and musts whose alcohol content did not comply with the declared or legal limits. In addition, there are organically declared IGT wine products, the analysis of which, however, revealed residues of unauthorised additives, as well as cellar books that were not kept or were kept inaccurately and irregularities in the accompanying documents.
According to the Minister of Agriculture, Stefano Patuanelli, "the protection of quality products is the most important tool to strengthen the Italian agri-food industry and supply chains and to provide an indispensable service to the consumer. In this, the ICQRF makes a fundamental contribution by protecting and enhancing the 'Made in Italy' label, taking action against all fraudulent behaviours that undermine correct market relations."
(al / source: winenews; photo: wikimedia)
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