Common Organisation of the Markets in Agricultural Products (Wine) (Amendment, etc.) Regulations 2021

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 15th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, viticulture is one of our great prospects in this country. In the two years leading up to lockdown there was a 35% increase in the number of people employed by the sector. More of our acreage is given over now to the commercial growing of wine than at any time certainly since the dissolution of the monasteries and possibly ever. Wine producers are making a calculated gamble on a warming of temperature in this region. Not only is a lot of Kent, Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire growing as a wine-producing area, but traditional champagne houses are buying up land because they too are able to see the way in which temperature is moving.

As my noble friend the Minister says, this SI deals in effect with an oversight that in itself is a minor issue. What is not a minor issue is the question of geographical indications and how to get them right. One of my neighbours in Hampshire produces an outstanding English sparkling wine—I say outstanding because it wins every blind tasting and is the only foreign sparkling wine served at the George V in Paris; not the only English wine, the only foreign wine—yet he has to get a name for it, a recognised brand, that will allow him to charge what it is intrinsically worth abroad.

We need to be aware of treading the line between consumer protection and accurate information for customers and, if you like, barriers to entry. These classification schemes are often set up deliberately to be a racket. They sometimes have rather amusing anomalies; for example, Stilton cheese can be produced in half a dozen places in the East Midlands, none of which is actually Stilton. It is not in the area allowed to produce that cheese and has to call it something else. Sometimes they are very obviously a racket. The most outstanding example within the wine trade is of course the 1855 Bordeaux classifications, from which you cannot move down. We need a response that is flexible, guards against producer capture and rewards innovation and start-ups.

My noble friend the Minister mentioned the trade bodies. WineGB’s chief executive, Simon Robinson, has a nice phrase, saying that our producers will be

“the New World in the Old World”,

by which he means that we will replicate the innovative, experimental approach of new world producers, who of course are much less tied to the concept of the appellation contrôlée than the European Union and continental wine producers are.

I hope that the Government will take on board what the industry is calling for, which is that, as we repatriate control, we should not simply replicate EU rules on geographical designations. We should have a UK regime, but it should be very light-touch. What is it that the prayer book says of marriage? We should approach it “reverently, discreetly, advisedly, soberly”—if “soberly” is the right word to use when talking about the wine industry.

I finish on a light note. Did noble Lords know that it can only be called “repartee” if it is said in the Repartée region of France, otherwise it is just sparkling wit?