Interesting article in the Economist magazine about the protection of European food appellations in North America in the context of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership treaty currently under negotiation.
This article states “Americans may call fizzy wine from California “champagne”, but that is not what it says on the bottle (though one vineyard won an exception)”.
Anyone know which vineyard?
Best regards,
Alex R.
Korbel. They have been doing it since the late 1800’s.
I don’t think that should exempt them.
I think it is a totally reasonable stance from the European union to want to protect their geographic names so I think people should just bite the bullet and do it. We’ve been going through this in Australia for a while now, and one of the earlier agreements was with the use of Champagne. I think that both sides put a lot of effort into re-educating the public and I think the end result is that there is improved quality in the domestic market, while both domestic and Champagne sales are much stronger.
Frank Family in Napa also uses the term. If I recall correctly, I believe they argue that they were grandfathered in. I also don’t think that they export their wines.
Andre, Cooks, Totts also has “California Champagne” listed on the label.
I still think it’s a terrible travesty that we here in the US have wines that use the terms “Champagne, Burgundy, Bordeaux”, etc. as their description.
We condemn and denounce China for copying so many things here in the US and/or trying to pass off Chinese knockoffs as equal, yet we don’t walk the walk when it comes to (what I view) as the same thing.