Friday, January 11 2008

A Smashing Case of Sparkling Wine

US Senator Susan Collins, christening the USS Farragut--domestic or imported?

Whenever I think of smashing champagne bottles, I remember an old-timey black and white newsreel of a perplexed looking queen belting the hull of a ship with an apparently indestructible bottle of champagne, over and over again. Classic!

But it turns out that breaking bottles of wine can have more to do with sinking commerce than launching ships. This week Belgian customs officials destroyed a shipment of US sparkling wine mis-labeled as 'Champagne. Fair enough: there are rules in place that dis-allow the misleading use of appellation names on wine not from that region.

The bottles of Gallo's André sparkling wine with references to "California Champagne" and "André Champagne Cellars" are in direct violation of export laws in numerous countries that protect the place names of wine regions. Under EU law, use of the word Champagne on wine labels is intended exclusively for wines produced in the Champagne region of France under the strict regulations of the region's Appellation of Controlled Origin (AOC). These laws ensure that consumers are not misled by falsely labeled bottles. As a result, any U.S. product that misuses the Champagne name and seeks to enter an export market that protects consumers from misleading labels is considered counterfeit. To avoid greater legal liabilities and legal procedures, the owner of the merchandise agreed to abandon it for immediate destruction.

FULL DISCLOSURE: The Gallo product has nothing to do with the parent company of Winexpert (Andrew Peller Limited) which was formerly known as Andrés Wines Ltd.)

There's even a video of some tidy and efficient Belgian workers smashing the cases and disposing of the residue along with the press release:

But to me this opens a bigger can of worms. What point in protecting the Champagne appellation when they're busy ripping themselves off already? You'll recall in a previous blog posting I noted that even though they had already relaxed production rule regarding crop levels (more grapes = less quality, but more volume, and so cash in the bank) demand was still so high that the AOC has agreed to add 40 new communes to the region. You can bet there won't be a Bollinger or a Fleurs de Champagne among them--it's going to be sweet, gooey swill for cheap guzzling.

Tom over at Fermentation Blog seems to see it as a triumph of tradition over crappy wine. While I agree with him that Gallo should re-label their product 'sparkling wine' and take off all references to Champagne (the truth shall set you free) I'm not sure that the sight of the crushed wine is a good symbol for cheap American sparkling wine. There's subtle mislabeling on many country's wines, the Beau-jo's cheat with sugar, the Austrians use anti-freeze, blah blah blah. I prefer to see it for having-it-both-ways protectionism. The EU won't let others use the name 'Champagne' on unqualified (and perhaps lower-quality) wines, but it's happy to fiddle the rules so it can do so itself.

Now where is my bottle of Millennium Sparkling Wine. . . ?

Posted by Tim AT 9:10PM

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