In November, Singapore’s Court of Appeals ruled in favour of the Italian Prosecco Consortium on a labelling dispute with Australia. Now, winemakers down under say the decision threatens other grape variety names. Nimmi Malhotra reports. Italian Prosecco will now be registered as a Geographical Indication in Singapore for the first time. Australian producers are therefore prohibited from exporting Australian ‘Prosecco’ to Singapore, following the first ever Court of Appeals decision on GIs. The ruling came in November 2023, when the Prosecco DOC Consortium won a Geographical Indication (GI) registration dispute against Australian winemaker’s body Australian Grape and Wine Inc. (AGW) in Singapore. Australian producers making sparkling wines from the Glera grape (used in Italy to make Prosecco) often refer to the grape itself as Prosecco, and label bottles as such. The Italian consortium’s victory followed a four-year battle on the subject, and culminated in an irrevocable decision that Australian sparkling wine can no longer be exported to Singapore as ‘Prosecco’. A four-year battle The dispute took four years to resolve. In 2019, the Delegation of the European Union in Singapore, with the support of the Italian Embassy in Singapore, registered Prosecco as a GI with the newly minted Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS). Soon after, AGW filed a notice to oppose the registration. In 2022, the decision by the Singapore High Courts swung in favour of AGW and spurred the Italian consortium to take the case to Singapore’s highest court, the Appeals Court. While the Appeals Court agreed with
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Wine
