By Jeremy Smith
BRUSSELS, May 26 (Reuters) - Rose wine producers from the world's top three winemaking countries joined forces on Tuesday to fight a plan to let red and white wines be blended in Europe to make rose, saying it would kill their industry. Next month, experts from the European Union's 27 countries will vote on a proposal tabled by the EU's executive Commission to scrap a longstanding ban on rose blending. Many of the countries have said they will vote to end the restriction.
That idea has infuriated quality rose producers from France, Italy and Spain -- the world's three leading winemakers -- who insist the two types of rose are utterly different and mixing two wine types to make a third is sheer anathema.
"Consumers know that many efforts have been made to improve the quality of rose wine and it's not by taking a bit of white wine and a bit of red. You will never get the taste and quality of rose wine," Xavier de Volontat, president of France's General Association of Wine Production, told a news conference.
"If the Commission is willing to take such a decision, it is certainly for commercial and marketing reasons," he said. "If the proposal goes forward, it will be the death of the sector."
Blended rose wine is usually made using white wine as the base and coloured with 2 to 3 percent of red, giving a colour approximating standard rose but with a vastly different taste and bouquet, producers say.
Recognised quality rose is made through the maceration of black grapes where the wine's colour comes as a result of contact between the juice of the grape, initially colourless, and the grape skin and seeds containing natural pigments.
"Consumers buy rose wine because of all the features it possesses. A consumer doesn't buy rose for its colour but for its quality and characteristics," said Pasquale de Meo, director of Federdoc, the Italian federation of quality wine producers.
"If the Commission wants to approve blending, it's probably because it has been urged to do so by industrial companies," he told the joint news conference.
"REAL" ROSE?
EU experts are scheduled to vote on the European Commission's proposal on June 19, following a first debate in January at which most EU countries represented said they would be in favour.
The Commission, which instigates and enforces EU policy, wants to remove the blending ban to allow European producers to compete better on growing export markets in Asia and elsewhere.
"Real" rose could carry a mention on the label, but producers in France, Spain and Italy rejected the idea since each EU state would decide whether to make it compulsory. The winemakers issued a statement dismissing the Commission's plan.
For the Commission, the proposal is about allowing a level playing field for European producers and reintroducing a practice approved elsewhere but banned years ago in the EU.
"It's an anomaly that you can produce quality wine by mixing red and white grapes. You can sell rose wine made by blending on the European market but we do not allow our producers to do it," said Michael Mann, the Commission's agriculture spokesman.
"This is an accepted winemaking practice ... and we need to give our producers the same opportunity to do this," he said.
(Editing by Sophie Hares)