Final Report Summary - ORWINE (Organic viticulture and wine-making: development of environment and consumer friendly technologies for organic wine quality improvement ...) The ORWINE project aimed at developing the scientific basis for legislative framework for wine from organic viticulture, taking into account environmental, health, market and product quality issues. As wine production is an important economic and cultural fact in many EU countries and applied techniques as well as wine type vary to a great extent from region to region, high attention is dedicated to stakeholders' involvement and participatory approach in order to grant final legislative proposal to be largely accepted and possibly, to be implemented in any EU condition. Oenological innovative techniques have been implemented, following experimental protocols aimed to decrease additives use (particularly sulphites) but enhancing wine quality. Protocols included oxigen management, yeast strains selection and comparison, flash-pasteurisation, cross-flow microfiltration, bipolar membranes, yeast spaying on grapes, glutathione production monitoring and activity and resistant variety testing. All obtained samples were analysed with routine analysis, sensorial evaluation (triangular test) and analysis of health related metabolites (ochratoxin A, biogenic amine and resverathrol). Over all three years stakeholders involvement was wide, continuous and intensive. That allowed to produce final results shared by large majority of them and well-known at national and International level. The rationale of the project was based on the idea of testing experimental wine-making alternatives tuned to the organic concept, verify their applicability on-farm, transfer the experience into regulatory proposal. All done considering the state of the art (as organic wine-making is an existing and economical significative sector already) and the opinion of all stakeholders. The final results allowed to provide the European Commission a useful and appreciated base for regulatory process, to offer producers and advisor a five language code of good organic viticulture and wine-making practices and an environmental assessment tool, and to propose researchers further topics for work. ORWINE was not supposed to produce new research results but more to evaluate the combination of existing knowledge. Nevertheless, the outcomes are proposed in a form ready for use by professionals and are of high interest to wine-makers, advisors, policy makers. The main goal of the project is fully reached as the final ORWINE report on regulatory issues is in use by DG Agri (Organic Farming Unit) and provides Member States good background for discussion. The main project results are the following: - Recommendations for the development of EU regulatory framework on organic wine-making. They are summarised in a report, in a language for easy use by policy makers and all stakeholders. They are already in use by the EU Commission (DG Agri, Organic farming Unit) that started the discussion on the regulation of organic wine-making from their contents. They are freely available for the project web page. - Code of good organic viticulture and wine-making, in five languages (English, German, French, Spanish and Italian), freely available from the project web page and in limited number of hard copies from project partners. - Environmental assessment tool, EIOVI, to be used by producers, policy makers and advisors. It was specifically developed for organic viticulture and can be a good guidance tool for decision making. It is freely available for the project web page. - Use of yeast spraying on the vineyard in order to prevent OTA (Ocratoxin A) development. The INRA group published promising results that cannot be implemented so far due to legal constraints (not allowed as treatments). Related documents Final Report - ORWINE (Organic viticulture and wine-making: development of environment and consumer friendly technologies for organic wine quality improvement ...)
