Scots step into Europe vodka row

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A Scottish minister is lobbying the European Parliament to reject a proposal to define vodka as a drink made only from potato or grain.

Most vodka from central regions of Europe is made from beet, while some southern countries make it from grapes.

The plan to restrict the list of permitted ingredients comes from a group of northern European countries.

Scottish Deputy Enterprise Minister Allan Wilson said he wanted a definition that respected UK interests.

Tradition

He said restricting the list of ingredients to grain and potato would represent a "commercial attack on the UK white spirits industry", which is concentrated in Scotland.

Vodka needs to be defined much like whisky Finnish MEP Alexander Stubb Since 1989, European law has said that vodka can be made of any agricultural raw materials.

But politicians from Finland, Poland, Sweden and the Baltic countries say vodka is their traditional drink, and should be made as they have traditionally made it - out of grain and potato.

Finnish MEP Alexander Stubb told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Scotch whisky has... a very strict definition - it can only be made out of grain and malted grain - and my argument is that we need equality.

"Vodka needs to be defined much like whisky."

'Cultural attack'

Mr Wilson countered that the difference between the two drinks was that you could taste the raw materials in whisky, but not in vodka.

But Mr Stubb accused of him of launching a "cultural attack", and of trying to claim that whisky was a better drink.

Vodka made of ingredients other than potato and grain tasted "very different" he said.

A group of vodka producers lobbying against the proposed changes, the European Vodka Alliance, says they are a "simple attempt to corner the market".

The alliance argues that Sweden and Finland only began to use the word "vodka" for their national spirits, brannvin and viina, in the 1970s.

It also points out that northern European countries have sometimes also used other ingredients than grain and potatoes.

Vodka has been made out of sugar beet or swede in Poland, the alliance says, and Swedish brannvin was sometimes made out of a waste product of the paper industry.