The European Union Registers Sahti as a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed

On March 1, 2002, European Commission Regulation 244/2002 entered into force, registering Sahti as a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed. The regulation had been adopted on February 8 and published on February 9. The protection tied commercial use of the name to a registered traditional method rather than to production within one narrowly bounded place. Sahti remained a living Finnish farmhouse tradition as well as a small commercial category. Its specification preserved features such as a grain-based wort, distinctive mashing and filtration practices, juniper use in some variants, and fermentation without reducing a regionally varied household tradition to a claim of unchanged antiquity.