The body of Slovene legislation governing the production and sale of wine is huge - wine is the most strictly controlled of all agricultural products. The most significant sections of this legislation are based on the bitter lessons of the Phylloxera plague of the 1850's. They specify the types of grapes that may be grown in specific areas and which types of substrate (roots) may be planted, establish authorities that issue mandatory advice on protection against pests and molds, and determine procedures for planting and maintaining vineyards - in short, the legislation defines and enforces all possible precautions to prevent the reemergence of the Phylloxera plague or other similar catastrophes.
For the buyer and the discerning drinker, the section governing acceptable methods of production and labeling is of particular interest. The production of high-quality wine requires expertise and hard work - which the pricing reflects. It is therefore quite understandable that "inventive" individuals have always sought methods for "simplified" production and developed shortcuts that sometimes even "by- passed" the vineyard completely. The oldest written recipes for the production of artificial wine were found in documents dating from the early period of the Roman Empire!
Many completely artificial concoctions are regularly sold as alcoholic beverages. Legislation governing the production and sale of foodstuffs suffices to make these (relatively) safe for human consumption. But wine is a beverage of prestige, its high price being based on the assumption that the product is derived only from the grape and not from a chemist's laboratory. The buyer must be offered additional guarantees, legal assurances that the bottle actually contains what the label states. Legislation governing the production and sale of wine therefore defines naming or labeling and penalizes any misuse of legitimate terminology. It protects both the buyer and the producer: the reputation of a wine-producing area, region, or country takes centuries to build but may be discredited by a single unscrupulous producer or distributor.
Slovene legislation is similar in many ways to the French, German, and Italian, although stricter in some aspects; Slovene legislation governing the production and sale of wine also conforms to the standards set by the European Union.
As a certificate of testing, the Slovene Wine Growers and Producers Association further grants the use of its registered seal, a registered trademark of Slovene wines: red for table wines with controlled geographic origin, silver for quality wines, and gold for high-quality wines. The use of this seal is not mandatory; it merely represents a further guarantee of a wine's quality and its compliance with the legislation.
Slovene legislation governing the production and sale of wine is based on the principle that wine should only be produced from natural must. Slovene legislation explicitly forbids any augmentation or reduction of natural ingredients that can affect the three principal characteristics of wine (vino strictu sensu): its colour, taste, and bouquet.
Arguably a most important aspect is the legislation's position on sugaring and the reduction or augmentation of acids:
- sugaring: in bad years, the sugar content of the must may be too low for fermentation. In such cases, the official regional office may allow sugaring for specific types of wine - but only to the extent necessary for proper fermentation. The regional authority determines the types of must that may be sugared in a particular vintage and the maximum amount of sugar that may be added. Furthermore, "wet sugaring" is explicitly forbidden.
Sugared must has to be fermented into a dry wine, that is, added sugar must not be reflected in the taste of the wine but only in sufficient alcohol content to preserve the wine's natural ingredients.
High-quality wines (Vrhunsko vino) may be produced only from unsugared must.
The only exception to this rule is sparkling wine in which secondary fermentation can only be achieved with the addition of the liqueur de tirage.
If you find a Slovene wine slightly sweet, you may therefore be sure that the residual sugar content does not come from sugaring. Since bottles of Slovene wines will most often be labeled only in Slovene, you may find the following dictionary useful:
- zelo suho - very dry, brut (used for sparkling wines only);
- suho - dry;
- polsuho - semi-dry;
- polsladko - semi-sweet;
- sladko - sweet.
- augmentation and reduction of acids: the reduction of acids is explicitly prohibited. For bottled table wines, ascorbic, sorbic, or metavinic acid may be added for preservative purposes in strictly defined quantities.
In this age when our awareness about our food and drink has reached sometimes excessive proportions, many people wonder about the sulfur content of wine. No proof has ever been found that sulfurous acid H2SO3 in the concentrations contained in wine has any harmful effects. Used for ages as a means of inhibiting the growth of undesired microbes in must and wine, sulfurization was sometimes excessive in the past, particularly in some cask-aged wines that required frequent racking (such wines had to be sulfured after every transfer). Although wines even contained over 400 mg of sulfurous acid per liter (23.4 grains/gallon), excessive drinkers suffered only from alcohol-induced liver cirrhosis and not from sulfur poisoning. Some drinkers blame "the high sulfur content of white wines" for headaches after heavy bouts of drinking, but these are caused by the excessive intake of alcohol and to a lesser extent by the polyphenols in aged cloudy wines.
Actually, in modern wine production, sulfurization is no longer necessary. With the microfiltering of the must, fermentation in genuinely air-tight vats, and the use of oxygen to suppress polyphenols, undesirable bacteria have no chance to get at the wine. However, some growers and producers still add sulfurous acid in minimal quantities, up to thirty mg/liter (1.75 grain/gallon): this has been a part of the winegrowing tradition for so long that many wine lovers feel wine simply tastes "wrong" without it.
