Quality Control
Tasks of the control bodies
The Order of 19/01/2010, of the Regional Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, which establishes the general system of control of wines with protected designation of origin and certification of the designation of origin of the same establishes the tasks to be performed by the control bodies, highlighting the following:
- To carry out regular checks on the raw material, production, bottling and labelling, with a view to obtaining guarantees on the traceability of the wine and on compliance with the specific specifications for each of the wines with designation of origin, verifying the origin of the wine grapes, the varieties from which the wine is made, the maximum yields per hectare, the winemaking methods, the specific oenological practices, where applicable, and the other elements contained in the specifications.
- This periodic verification shall be carried out systematically for all operators and shall be carried out at least once a year in accordance with the provisions of 90(3) of Regulation (EU) No 1306/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 December 2013 on the financing, management and monitoring of the common agricultural policy, repealing Council Regulations (EC) No 352/78, (EC) No 165/94, (EC) No 2799/98, (EC) No 814/2000, (EC) No 1290/2005 and (EC) No 485/2008.
- These verifications shall be carried out by means of periodic gauging that accredits the correlation between the volumes of raw material, wine in the production process and wine produced, documented and present at the facility, where the inspection of the register books, accompanying documents and the rest of the documentation that affects them shall be requested, and which must be available at all times.
- The certification body must verify that all consignments of wine identified as wine with a designation of origin and which have already been deemed suitable in each case have been sampled and subjected to analytical and organoleptic tests.
- It must also check that the means used to carry out these tests meet the necessary conditions for carrying them out.
- The certification body must sample and submit to the corresponding physico-chemical and organoleptic analyses at least 50 percent of the total volume of the wine that in each campaign the operator has considered to be suitable as it complies with the analytical and organoleptic characteristics and the other elements described in the specifications of the corresponding designation of origin.
- Sampling shall be carried out in accordance with the method laid down by the certification body in its procedures, which shall detail the rules to ensure the representativeness of the samples. These procedures must also include all the elements necessary to identify the sampled consignments and must include an express declaration by the operator, or his representative, that he agrees to the representativeness of the samples. Samples must be anonymous, i.e. the operator must not be identified, and must be taken at any stage of the production process, including at bottling or afterwards, and must be representative of the relevant wines held by the operator.
- The analytical and organoleptic examinations of these samples shall be carried out in laboratories complying with and accredited to the General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories, standard EN ISO/IEC 17025 and shall demonstrate that the product under examination meets the characteristics and qualities described.
- Notwithstanding what is indicated in the previous paragraph, the competent Regional Ministry for Agriculture may designate, by granting a provisional authorisation and while the accreditation process is being carried out, those laboratories in which these analytical and organoleptic examinations can be carried out, so that the accreditation body can adequately assess whether the laboratory’s activity complies with the aforementioned standard EN 17025.
