Brussels, May 30 - Centuries-old winemaking traditions in northern and eastern Europe will be outlawed if the European Union's farm chief gets her way and bans the use of sugar in such world famous labels as Champagne.
In many cooler areas of Europe, such as Austria, Germany and parts of France, it has been standard practice for centuries to increase the alcoholic strength of local wines by adding sucrose from beet or cane sugar.
As part of an ambitious reform plan, EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel wants to force sugar-using winemakers to use unfermented grape juice instead, helping to drain EU's notorious "wine lakes" and align output with demand.
"In a situation where we are in surplus, it doesn't make any sense adding sugar when we have a surplus of wine materials," one Commission official told Reuters.
"It also puts everyone on the same footing, although we know it will make it a bit more expensive to make wine," he said.
Enriching wine with sugar costs about a third as much as using concentrated grape musts and is a traditional winemaking method in much of north-central and eastern Europe, in countries such as Austria, Britain, Germany, Luxembourg and several of the ex-communist states that joined the EU in 2004, like Hungary.
Even France, the world's largest winemaker, blends sugar into wines in some of its northern vine areas.
SUGARY CHAMPAGNE
Champagne producers, based in France's most northerly Appellation Controlee area, have a long tradition of adding sugar, for example, although famous red and white wines from the country's warmer southern regions are sugar-free.
Enriching wine with sugar is known as chaptalisation, after French industrial chemist Jean-Antoine Chaptal, who introduced the practice of adding sugar to wines in poor vintages.
However, using sugar in wine is banned in Mediterranean countries including Italy, Portugal and Spain, where only concentrated unfermented grape juice may be used.
While the proposed sugar ban is not expected to "make or break" for planned EU wine reforms, which also call for growers to be paid to dig up vineyards and reduce production, it will certainly raise the hackles of several powerful EU governments.
"In Austria and in some other countries, we hold the clear position that we need it (sugar) for the future," said Josef Proell, Austria's agriculture minister, at last week's informal EU farm ministers' meeting. Germany has also said it is opposed.
Diplomats said the European Commission, the EU executive, would probably want to stick to its guns on the sugar ban for as long as possible. But while it might become a bargaining chip in the final reform negotiations, it would probably not be crucial.
"I would be very surprised if this turned into a deal-breaker either way," said one. "And France is schizophrenic on this because you could classify the country as being both in the north and south at the same time."