As things stand, the recent prohibition
of the Bag in Box by the Superior Court of Justice of Andalucía
only affects Sherry and Manzanilla, but not wines from the Production Zone. For
example Fino from Chiclana has long been widely sold – legally - in BIB, mainly
to local tabancos, but to the extent that the Unión de Viticultores Chiclaneros
once threatened to leave the DO if it were banned.
With the echoes of the BIB court
case still ringing, and its supporters, like the Association of Artisan Bodegas
of Sanlúcar
left with one last legal resort (or forlorn hope) of winning their case in the
Supreme Court, the cooperative Virgen de los Palomares in Trebujena, which is
in the Production Zone, is preparing to launch a Fino in BIB under the name of
a well-known Manzanilla brand sold only in bulk with the name assigned to the
coop by its owner, a member of the Artisan Bodegas Association.
The brand is the popular “Manzanilla
La E” from Bodegas Herederos de Argüeso owned by Francisco Yuste and the
wine will be the coop´s own Fino, not the Manzanilla which is a separate DO, sold
as “Fino La E” for which DO guarantee seals have already been applied for at
the Consejo Regulador.
This move marks a contrast to the
aspirations of the coops of the area of merging the Production Zone with the
Ageing Zone, one of the matters currently under review by the commission set up
by the Consejo with a view to reforming the regulations covering the wines of
the DO. The Consejo finds the move “hardly serious and incomprehensible” since
when the two zones are merged, as is likely this coming year, the BIB will be
prohibited, so there seems little point in it.
On the other hand, the president
of Los Palomares, Juan Manuel Sánchez, sustains that the changes to
the regulations will take ages – it had been hoped they could have come into force
this year, but they didn´t - and it is not clear what the terms of the final
agreement of the new regulations will be. “In any case we can always reverse
the decision” he says.
In fact he says that the coop had
been leaving the BIB to one side to fight for the merging of the zones and had even
postponed an application for EU funds to increase production, though they will apply
at the next round once the regulations have been resolved and they know if they
need a new normal bottling line or one which fills BIBs.
“Things are taking ages and let us
hope they can be sorted at the next Consejo plenary in January, but we are not
holding our breath, but the coop has to look for profitability” he says. And
this is why they accepted Yuste´s offer of the brand name so they could change
it to Fino and sell it in BIB. Palomares, the largest of the two coops in
Trebujena has only previously used the BIB format for mosto but according to
Dcoop, to which Palomares belongs, there is growing demand for wines in this
format in countries where BIB is popular.
Sánchez believes that the
current regulations have given rise to incongruencies which are the result of the
duality of the Production and Ageing Zones and the existence of wines of two
categories: Sherry and Manzanilla which can only be aged in the Ageing Zone for
the DO and the other wines from the Production Zone, places like Trebujena,
Chipiona, Chiclana, Rota… which can use terminology like Oloroso, Fino etc
which must be accompanied by the name of the place of production. He feels that
the regulations need to be more realistic and logical so as not to give rise to
such situations.
