The label The region
What does the region on a wine label actually guarantee?
A region on a label is a claim about where the grapes grew. Print one, and at least 850 mL in every litre of the wine must have come from there.
General information about Australian wine labelling law. Each rule names its source; check the regulator’s page before you rely on it.
85 of 100, and what the rest of the wine may be.
The share from the region
The Wine Australia Regulations 2018 set the share of the wine that a single place name on a label has to be true of, and the conditions that go with it.
The Regulations set it out as a condition and a share: where the description and presentation of wine uses one geographical indication registered in relation to Australia, and does not use an indication registered in relation to another country or a foreign place name, at least 850 mL in every litre of the wine must have been obtained from grapes grown in the region or locality in Australia the indication is registered for. Wine Australia states the share for a single place name plainly: the wine must comprise at least 850 mL in every litre, 85 per cent, from the claimed geographical indication.
Two or three places on the label are allowed, under their own rule, and the shares are different from the single-region case.
In total, at least 950ml/L of the wine must have been obtained from grapes grown in the regions or localities in relation to which those GIs are registered; and at least 50ml/L of the wine must have been obtained from each of those regions or localities; and the description and presentation must set out the registered GIs in descending order of the proportions of the relevant grapes in the wine.
Wine Australia Regulations 2018 (Cth) s 26(5), following the conditions in s 26(4), on the Federal Register of Legislation
The Regulations also cap how many place names a label may carry: where a label uses one or more geographical indications registered in relation to Australia, the total number of registered indications and foreign place names on it must be three or less.
Worked onto a bottle, the single-region rule comes out as 637.5 mL of a 750 mL bottle from the region printed, at least. Across two or three regions the floor for the group is 712.5 mL of a 750 mL bottle, and each named region has to hold at least 37.5 mL of it. Those are the same shares as the bars above, written in millilitres.
The register, level by level
The geographical indications a label may use are kept in one register, which the Wine Australia Act sets up.
The Registrar is to keep a register to be known as the Register of Protected Geographical Indications and Other Terms.
Wine Australia Act 2013 (Cth) s 40ZC(1), on the Federal Register of Legislation
The Register is to be divided into 4 parts as follows: (a) Part 1 is to include: geographical indications in relation to wines originating in Australia, and any conditions of use applicable to those indications; and geographical indications in relation to wines originating in a foreign country, any translations of those indications, and any conditions of use applicable to those indications or translations; (b) Part 2 is to include traditional expressions in relation to wines originating in a foreign country, and any conditions of use applicable to those expressions; (c) Part 3 is to include quality wine terms in relation to wines originating in Australia, and any conditions of use applicable to those terms; (d) Part 4 is to include other terms (not being geographical indications, translations of geographical indications, traditional expressions, or terms referred to in paragraph (c)), in relation to wines, and any conditions of use applicable to those terms.
Wine Australia Act 2013 (Cth) s 40ZD(1), on the Federal Register of Legislation
Inside Part 1, the Australian indications are arranged by size, and Wine Australia is careful to say that size is all the arrangement means. It describes them as states, zones, regions and sub-regions, and adds that all registered indications carry the same protection, and that a geographical indication on a label counts as a claim in whatever context it appears. Each state is itself a protected term, and zones, which were first declared in December 1996, cover all of Australia: a grapevine in Australia cannot sit outside a geographical indication zone.
Zones are the large framework, and one of them, South Eastern Australia, is larger than most people expect: the register’s textual description for it takes in the whole of New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory, and parts of Queensland and South Australia. Wine Australia gives its entry in the register as 1 May 1996.
The clearest way to see the levels is one chain, from the top down.
- Australiathe country is the top of the register
- New South Walesits entry in the Register of Protected Names is dated 26 January 1994
- Hunter Valleya zone, entered on 1 May 1996
- Huntera region, entered on 18 March 1997
- Pokolbina subregion, entered on 29 July 2010
Where a region’s boundary is written
Every indication in the register has a boundary, and the boundary is a piece of prose. Wine Australia’s register says the definition of each one rests on textual descriptions of its boundary, and its table of indications says in terms that the textual description is the legal definition, that the maps are graphic representations only, and that where the two disagree the textual description takes precedence. The page for the South Eastern Australia indication puts the same point the other way round: a map is a translation of the description into a spatial format.
The descriptions do work that a boundary line could not. Two examples from the register’s notes: Murray Darling and Swan Hill lie inside both the Big Rivers zone in New South Wales and the North West Victoria zone in Victoria, so a wine carrying either name sits inside a larger zone as well. And the name Great Western may be used only under conditions of use that are legally enforceable.
For a reader at the shelf, the practical point is that the place on the label is a legal term with a definition, not a description of scenery. When a label says a wine comes from a region, the share rule and the definition of the region are both doing the work.
Names that belong to other places
Part 1 of the register also holds place names that belong to wine made elsewhere, and the Act treats a label that uses one of them for the wrong wine as false. A label that names a registered indication for a wine that did not originate in the place it is registered for has a false description and presentation. That side of the register, the protected names on it and the dates they took effect, is the subject of its own guide.