Labels do matter!

I am baffled. In the August 2003 issue of The Circle, Delicata's wine spokesman, Bill Hermitage, is quoted as advising consumers: "Forget labels and brands - drink what you like". If labels and brands are so unimportant, why does his company spend well over Lm100,000 in brand advertising every year?

In The Times Business (August 28), Mr Hermitage exhorts his readers to "Think Malta, Drink Malta". In this same article, he complains that his company's sales would be adversely affected by EU wine-labelling regulations. He laments that wines produced in Malta from imported grapes will no longer be allowed to bear a varietal name. If the grapes are imported, how can anyone "Think Malta", let alone "Drink Malta"?

Labels do matter. Bona fide consumers will only put their faith behind labelling regulations when labels effectively enable consumers to distinguish real wine from sugar-wine and to identify wine made in Malta from wine made from imported grapes. Many Maltese farmers will commit themselves to growing wine-grapes in Malta only when they are convinced that EU labelling regulations are being fully enforced.

Otherwise, they will continue to fear that their grapes will be shortchanged. Malta's large winemakers have anomalously secured from the authorities a "temporary" derogation to use cheap sugar and imported grapes in wine production.

The same cost of sugar converts into 15 times the volume of "wine" than the equivalent cost of Maltese wine-grapes used alone.

The spokesman's worries may, in fact, be of a business rather than agricultural nature. If all Maltese wines were made exclusively from Malta-grown wine-grapes - and nothing else - the quantity of "authentic wine" produceable in Malta would be significantly smaller. Under such circumstances, the large wine advertising budgets afforded to date would practically disappear!