Italian senator calls Piwi wine proposal’s exclusion a missed opportunity

ROME — On Wednesday, November 4, Gian Marco Centinaio, the vice president of the Italian Senate and a senator from the League party, said the exclusion of a proposal on Piwi grape varieties from the Coltiva Italia bill was a missed opportunity for Italian viticulture.

In a statement released in Rome, Centinaio said he regretted that an amendment by Senator Pietro Patton did not find space in the agriculture bill now under discussion in the Senate. The proposal sought to allow Piwi varieties, which are grapevines bred for resistance to fungal diseases, to be included in the production rules for wines with protected denominations of origin.

Centinaio said the measure would have opened DOC and DOCG denominations to wines made with disease-resistant hybrid vines, but only if the relevant protection consortium chose to do so. Under that approach, the decision would not have been automatic across all denominations. Each consortium would have been able to decide whether to admit those varieties into its own rulebook.

He argued that the proposal was consistent with European rules and said it had also been supported by a bipartisan parliamentary question that he presented to the agriculture minister together with Antonella Forattini, a lawmaker from the center-left Democratic Party. Centinaio said such a change would recognize the contribution of research to Italian viticulture while preserving product quality and consumer safety.

He also called on the Senate to examine a separate bill introduced by Patton that would amend Italy’s consolidated wine law on the same issue. Centinaio said he hoped that bill could be approved before the end of the current legislature.

The dispute centers on whether Italy’s highly regulated denomination system should allow greater use of resistant grape varieties in wines sold under the country’s best-known quality labels. DOC and DOCG rules govern how wines are produced and marketed in many of Italy’s most important wine regions. Any change affecting which grape varieties are allowed can have direct consequences for growers, wineries and consortia that oversee the denominations.

Piwi varieties have drawn attention in recent years because their resistance to fungal diseases can reduce the need for some vineyard treatments. Supporters say that could help producers lower costs and advance sustainability goals without weakening quality standards, especially if adoption remains subject to decisions by local consortia. Critics in parts of the sector have raised concerns in the past about preserving tradition, typicity and the identity of historic appellations.

That makes the issue important for the beverage industry beyond the immediate parliamentary debate. If Italy eventually broadens access for resistant varieties within DOC and DOCG wines, the change could influence replanting decisions, production costs and competitive strategy for wine producers working under denomination rules. It could also affect how consortia balance environmental goals with market positioning in premium wine categories.

For now, however, the proposal cited by Centinaio is not part of the Coltiva Italia bill being debated in the Senate. His statement turned the issue back into a political question, with pressure on lawmakers to decide whether the matter will be taken up through Patton’s separate bill rather than through the broader agriculture package.