Appears in
Oxford Companion to Wine

By Jancis Robinson

Published 2006

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EU wine is wine at its most basically European, a blend of wines without geographical indication from more than one country in the eu. The constituents of an EU wine tend to vary with the vagaries of the bottom layer of the European wine market. One of the most common blends, however, has been cheap white vino from Italy, neutralized by extensive filtration, centrifugation, and, sometimes, charcoal treatment, ‘Germanized’ by the addition of some German Wein made from a heavily aromatic variety such as morio-muskat. In France, EU wine blends have included blends of French red vin and a much deeper coloured vino from southern Italy, and blends of French white vin with the much cheaper Spanish viña. The market for such concoctions is, thankfully, shrinking.