Article

Ordinance No. 275/2025/1 and traditional aromatisation methods

This article examines Ordinance No. 275/2025/1 of 31 July, which lays down complementary national rules on the traditional production methods used for the aromatisation of brandy, wine spirit and grape marc spirit under Regulation (EU) 2019/787.

Why the ordinance matters

• EU law establishes as a general rule that brandy, wine spirit and grape marc spirit may not be aromatised, except where traditional production methods are allowed.
• However, the EU framework does not specify in concrete terms which traditional methods are admissible.
• The new Portuguese ordinance is therefore significant because it fills a clear domestic normative gap while preserving historically rooted practices.

Historical Portuguese background

• The article recalls that older Portuguese legislation already left room for accepted ingredients, technological practices and product-enhancing methods, even if it did not expressly codify aromatisation techniques in the modern sense.
• That historical background supports the view that such practices were culturally present and legally tolerated, even without precise positive-law formulation.
• The new ordinance can thus be read not as an invention of new methods, but as a formal recognition and delimitation of existing traditional knowledge.

Legal significance

• The ordinance matters both for legal certainty and for heritage protection: it allows operators and control bodies to know which processes remain compatible with the national and EU framework.
• It also helps defend the Portuguese specificity of wine-derived spirits against a purely abstract reading of the EU ban on aromatisation.
• The text fits into a broader effort to preserve traditional spirit-making practices without abandoning regulatory discipline.

Editorial conclusion

• Ordinance No. 275/2025/1 is important because it gives positive legal form to practices that were historically rooted but insufficiently codified.
• Its relevance goes beyond technical production rules: it concerns legal recognition of cultural continuity in Portuguese spirits.
• The broader lesson is that heritage and precision in regulation do not have to be opposites.

Notice

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