The original Sovio banned by FSA was produced in Spain but a fresh production batch, this time from California, is now on the shelves of Waitrose. Tony Dann explains the switch from Spain to California: “EU regulations are hard enough to wrestle with and Britain’s FSA doesn’t make the task any easier. But no-one can contend that the Spinning Cone technique isn’t a standard, legitimate winemaking tool in California, and wines made with it are readily admissible into the UK. So Spain’s loss is California’s gain”. “It’s ironic”, he adds, “that British taxpayers get stuck with some of the cost of subsidising Europe’s wine surplus”.

Despite the legitimacy of the Spinning Cone Column for products from California, the FSA has again refused to allow Sovio to be called wine, so the labelling problem remains – because Trading Standards and the FSA still disagree on how Sovio should be described. Caught in the middle, Sovio is reluctantly using the words proposed by the FSA, “wine based drink” on its new back label – whereas the company and Trading Standards would much prefer the far more accurate descriptor “partially de-alcoholised wine”.
As for Waitrose, they had no doubt Sovio belongs in their wine section. Wine buyer Nick Room said: “We’re proud to be launching Sovio, in response to consumer interest in lighter style, less alcoholic wines. Although it contains only 8% alcohol, our tasting panel agreed Sovio’s taste, flavour, and body are fully comparable to conventional wines. We chose to start with Sovio because we thought it’s the best of the various new wines in this new lighter style category”.