European rye whisky is not allowed to be called rye whisky, says EU

For reasons known only to Ursula von der Leyen’s aromatherapist, the EU has suddenly decided to enforce an old trade agreement reserving the term rye whisky for Canadian and American products.

“Though the mills of God grind slowly; Yet they grind exceeding small”

Substitute the word ‘God’ for the EU and you have an explanation for a row that has broken out over the term rye whisky. Someone has just noticed the exact wording of a trade agreement between the EU and Canada:

“the Community shall recognise rye whisky as referring only to spirit drinks originating in Canada and shall not permit the use of this name on spirit drinks not originating in Canada.”

There is an addendum clarifying that the US can also use the term but nobody else including EU producers. The peculiar thing is that this isn’t some new treaty, it’s from 2003/2004 so it has been in law for over 20 years before anyone noticed. It’s rather like one of those bizarre English by-laws saying that Welshmen are not allowed in Shrewsbury after dark on a Saturday or something. The difference is that the member states are enforcing it.

According to the EU, this isn’t rye whisky. Probably.

According to Mikko Koskinen from Kyrö distillery in Finland, the impetus comes from the EU rather than pressure from the Canadians. Alex Munch from Stauning in Denmark said: “We went through a long approval process to get into Canada, and our rye whisky was approved without any problems.”

Kyrö will have to relabel its rye whisky as “whisky made from rye” and the words whisky and rye cannot be on the same line.” It’s made from 100% malted rye. American rye whiskeys must be made from a minimum of 51% rye and yet in a bizarre twist, there is no definition for Canadian rye whisky - it doesn’t legally have to contain any rye at all. Mikko Koskinen described it as “incredibly bananas.” And then said:

“In 2019, the term single malt was reserved to spirits made with barley, and now we find out that we can't call our whisky rye whisky. It's like making extra virgin olive oil and suddenly being unable to call the produce 'extra virgin' nor 'olive oil'."

Things are more confusing for Stauning which also makes a rye whisky but according to the American definition so he’ll have to label his as “whisky made of rye and barley” for the EU market. But to export to the US, it has to say ‘rye whisky’. “This is a crazy trade agreement, It is so wrong. You cannot protect the name of grain, you can protect a place but not a raw material”, Munch said.

So far the response to this old law has come from Denmark and Finland. Koskinen said: “Just because the Finns are doing it doesn’t mean the French will do it. The Finns are a bit unilateral about it.” There are rye producers all over the EU most notably in Holland, Austria, Germany and France. Munch said:

“Haider has been making rye whisky in Austria for 30 years before the treaty came in. The EU has done something against the producer without them knowing - so they are very angry”.

The Nordic producers are calling for the old treaty to be rewritten: “The CETA trade agreement should be renegotiated to ensure that European distilleries can continue to describe their whisky accurately,” they said in a press release which went out this morning.

What is even less clear is what all this means for British rye producers like InchDairnie in Scotland or Fielden in England. Munch seemed to think Britain, and other countries that make rye, would not be affected though the fact that the term ‘rye whisky’ is reserved for just Canada and US does point towards potential problems.

Ian Palmer from InchDairnie told me: “I raised this in 2023 with the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) and they said it was just a badly written paragraph in a trade agreement.” In other words, there is nothing to see here. Palmer continued “but it seems pretty plain to me. I wonder if someone has dropped the ball.”

The Scots situation is further complicated by there not being any SWA definition for rye whisky so such whiskies are classified as single grain whiskies though InchDairnie has come up with a new label for its RyeLaw with the supplementary term ‘Scottish rye whisky’.

He finds the whole thing absolutely baffling: “Europeans using the term rye whisky isn't going to sink the Canadian economy. I can’t understand why it was there in the first place.” But unlike the Finns and the Danes, he isn’t scrambling to relabel his products: “We are just going to ignore it.”

The big question is: why is this happening now when the treaty is over 20 years old? Mikko Koskinen speculates that it may have been some Czech or Polish distillers who “checked in more thoroughly than people have done in the last 20 years” and this set the mills of justice at the EU in motion. Munch said: “I do not know how this started. Was it a Canadian company, distributor or brand?”

Palmer has a more interesting theory that might have something to do with Donald Trump: “Everyone is very sensitive around trade agreements because the man himself in Washington is gleefully tearing them up.” So enforcing arcane legislation is an attempt by the old rules-based world to grapple with Trumpian chaos.

Whatever the reason, we are in a situation where everyone knows this law is completely mad, but Denmark, Finland and probably at some point other member states, are duty-bound to enforce it. It begs the further questions, how many other bizarre rules are there on the EU statute books waiting to be discovered and enforced?

I have written an updated version of this story for Decanter magazine which fills in a few blanks.