In Victoria’s King Valley tourists travel down Prosecco Road, so called because the wine region has now become known for the variety.
Otto Dal Zotto, an Italian immigrant from the town of Valdobbiadene, the birthplace of the sparkling white wine, was the first person to grow the grape variety commercially in Australia when he planted his first vines on the fertile slopes above the King River in 1999.
“When we started there was nothing. Nobody knew actually what prosecco was,” he said.
But now the work of Dal Zotto and the other Australian producers who have invested to grow the local product to become a $205m a year industry is under threat.
Local growers may no longer be able to call it prosecco, as the European Union is seeking to ban Australian producers from using the variety name as part of the Australian-EU free trade agreement currently being negotiated.
“It makes me very sad and a bit angry in a way because we’re not doing anything but just trying to share prosecco with the Australia public,” Dal Zotto said.
Dean Carroll, the chief executive officer of Brown Brothers, the largest Australian producer of prosecco, said the decision would be devastating, especially considering how much Australian viticulturists had invested in growing the market for Australian prosecco in the past decade.
“Australia has invested really heavily in prosecco. We ourselves have invested $25m-plus in a production facility to be able to cope with demand.
“So having to go back to scratch and promote something unknown and unheard of from zero base would have a substantial impact both on tourism in our region, the King Valley, but also on jobs and our ability to support the local community,” Carroll said.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said the EU had sought protection for prosecco as a geographical indication in the context of the Australia-EU wine agreement.
The agreement came into effect in 2010 and saw Australian winemakers lose the right to call their sparkling wine champagne.
However, Lee McLean, the chief executive officer of peak body Australian Grape and Wine, said while champagne was always a region in France, prosecco was a grape variety name in Italy and all around the world until 2009.
“Just like chardonnay or cabernet sauvignon,” McLean said.
“In 2009 the Italian government decided that they would create a region called prosecco and they would change the name of the grape variety to glera.
“The issue we have is that Australian producers and many others around the world had been using prosecco in good faith and investing in grape vines and production facilities long before the Italians made that decision.
“The European Union’s approach to this issue is motivated by a desire to protect Italian producers from competition and nothing more,” McLean said.
Australian wine producers visited Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday to brief parliamentarians on the importance of the prosecco grape variety to Australia’s wine sector and regional economies.
Dfat said “Australia’s position remains that we should continue to respect the terms of the existing Australia-EU wine agreement, which includes continued use by industry of grape variety names including prosecco.”
