IRVO - Regional Institute of Wine and Oil, Sicilian Region

The Regional Institute of Wine and Oil, IRVO is a public body of the Sicilian Region established with Regional Law n.64 / 1950, which by statute proposes the increase of the wine heritage with regard to production, industry and trade in related products. Since its inception, the institution has been alongside Sicilian wineries, but in particular since the end of the 1980s it has been the driving force and driving force for what is called the “renaissance” of the Sicilian wine sector. For the next 25 years, the Institute was a point of reference on the island for research and experimentation activities in the wine sector as well as for the most important promotional actions for Sicilian wines.

With the Regional Law 2/2007, art. 35, the Institute was recognized as a Research Body of the Sicilian Region, while with the Regional Law n. 25/2011, the IRVO has seen its sphere of activity extended to the olive oil sector.

Since 2012, the IRVO has been designated by the Ministry of Agricultural, Food and Forestry Policies, the Control and Certification Body of all Sicilian PDO and PGI wines, since 2015 the public authority to carry out checks for PGI extra virgin olive oil ” Sicily “and, since 2016, also for the PDO extra virgin olive oil” Valdemone “. On 30 September 2021, the IRVO as a Wine Certification Body, was accredited by ACCREDIA for the UNI CEI EN ISO / IEC 17065 standard  2012 “Conformity assessment. Requirements for bodies that certify products, processes and services” for the control and certification activities of Sicilian PDO / PGI wines.

Finally, since 2016, the IRVO has been recognized as a professional training institution for the macro-types of Further Education, Higher Education and Continuing and Permanent Training by the Department of Education and Vocational Training.

The slow food Presidia represent a community of producers, a territory and a heritage of culture and knowledge and are virtuous examples of the local economy.

The Regional Institute of Wine and Oil, by joining the Terra Madre 2022 initiative, wanted to promote the products and the territories, favoring the dissemination of knowledge on production techniques, product quality and the great biodiversity that Sicily has kept.