General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People’s Republic of China released “The information of food and cosmetic refused for entry in May of 2017” on July 3, among which 23 batches of imported unqualified wine at a weight of 15184.5 kg were destroyed or returned at entry inspection. The unqualified products were mainly due to packaging, label, out-of-limit copper, overuse of food additive citric acid and sodium salt, kali salt thereof, as well as food additive saccharin sodium salt, which were mainly from 8 nations or regions such as France, Spain, Portugal, Australia, South Africa, Chile, Italy and Armenia.

It is worth noting that all the 15 batches of unqualified packaged ones accounting for 65% in the imported wine were destroyed. Besides, 4 batches from Australia were returned at Xiamen Port due to unqualified label, the importer of which is Xiamen ITG Holding Co., Ltd, and the manufacture of which is BW Fitzgerald & Penhall Investments Pty Ltd T/A Nannup Ridge Estate.

According to this event, Foodmate systemized the unqualified wine and fruit wine detected in the sampling inspection imported to China from January 1, 2016 to July 6, 2017 by our self-established Food Sampling Information Inquiry and Analysis System, and found that there are 207 batches of unqualified imported wine and fruit wine detected in the sampling inspection in total from 2016, among which the other unqualified reasons account for 44.4%, label reason accounts for 23.2%, food additive reasons accounts for 15%, quality index reason accounts for 14.5%, pollutant reason accounts for 2.4%, and illegal addition accounts for 0.5%.

The other reasons in the unqualified reasons include 76% unqualified packaging, 18.5% uncompleted materials, 2.2% product type, 2.2% foreign matters, and 1.1% of ones refused for entry.

It can be seen from this data that the major five unqualified reasons of wine and fruit wine detected in the sampling inspection imported to China are that packaging, label, food additive and quality index are not in conformity, and the materials are incomplete.

Data shows that China’s demand for imported wines is growing. The bottled wine imported to China reached 480 million liters (about 640 million bottles) just in 2016, which is 22% more than 2015. The overall value is 2.2 billion US dollars, which rises by 17%, about 3.42 US dollars/bottle. In addition, the import of bulk wine is 140 million liters, and the sparkling wine is 12 million liters. In addition to the huge business opportunities caused by the growth in demand, China’s inspection and quarantine on imported food is becoming increasingly strict. Recently, China has informed WTO that all the imported foods must be provided with official certificates from October. In this situation, overseas alcohol manufacturers must be familiar with China’s laws & regulations requirements for imported wine, and pay special attention to the packaging, labeling and other aspects mentioned above, to ensure compliance of product.

Laws & regulations standard related to wine:

GB 7718-2011 General standard for the labeling of prepackaged foods

GB 28050-2011 General standard for the nutritional labeling of prepackaged foods

Announcement on Implementing the Provisions on Supervision and Administration of Label Inspection for import and Export Prepackaged Food

Announcement No. 27, 2012 of the AQSIQ

GB 2760-2014 National food safety standard-Standards for uses of food additives

GB 2757-2012 National Food Safety Standards – distilled wines and mixed wines

GB 2758-2012 National Food Safety Standards – fermented wine and mixed wine