Spirits made from grapes will still be marketable as vodka, under a new EU accord ending a threat to limit the alcohol’s ingredients to the traditional grain or potatoes.
The agreement by EU agriculture ministers lets vodka manufacturers and liquor companies such as Diageo Plc use non-traditional vodka ingredients, provided they are mentioned on the label. Vodka made from cereals or potatoes will simply be flagged up as vodka, according to news agency Bloomberg.
“We were able to reach a pragmatic compromise on the definition of vodka,” EU farm commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said in a statement in Brussels. The ministerial accord follows an agreement by the European Parliament in June, ending two years of debate among lawmakers over new EU labelling rules.
Vodkas like Diageo’s grape-distilled Ciroc make up about 10 per cent of the EU vodka market, but the Swedish manufacturers of Absolut vodka and Polish, Finnish and Baltic distillers wanted the EU to limit the use of the word vodka.
Diageo prints the wording “distilled from fine French grapes” on bottles of Ciroc.
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