Modena’s Balsamic Vinegar manufacturers are closest to conquer EU protection. Indeed, following two recent judgements by German courts regarding ‘Italian-sounding’ branding, the Consortium for the Protection of Balsamic Vinegar of Modena expects a positive conclusion to other pending cases. Every year, more than 95 million litres of balsamic vinegar are produced in the Italian province of Modena, of which over 90% is exported to 120 countries around the world. Last year, courts in the German cities of Cologne and Mannheim created a historic precedent by acknowledging the illegality of companies using Italian-sounding branding to convince consumers to “purchase counterfeit products.” Now sales of products bearing the generic name “balsamic” is forbidden worldwide.
According to the managing director of the Consortium for the Protection of Balsamic Vinegar of Modena Federico Desimoni, the new legal situation could lead to the elimination of various imitative products, evocative of Modena’s balsamic vinegar, from the EU market, thus opening new marketing and commercial possibilities for the product. “The opportunity of protecting Balsamic Vinegar of Modena,” he said, “against products generically named as ‘balsamic’ is of fundamental importance for our sector and greatly extends the activities of vigilance and protection that we will be able to carry out throughout Europe, starting in Italy, where there are still a great number of irregularities. This is just the first step in a protection strategy that will be carried on with conviction on several fronts.”
