Remember Rhine wine, Mountain Chablis and Hearty Burgundy? When all fizz was Champagne, and Sherry and Madeira could be found in the cooking aisle?
That was then. A recent World Trade Organization agreement cracked down our use of those names, along with Burgundy, Chianti, Claret, Haut-Sauterne, Hock, Marsala, Malaga, Moselle, Port, Retsina, Sauternes, and Tokay.
We conceded, in return for the privilege of selling our wine freely in Europe, an idea vigorously protested by EU farmers’ organizations. "It cannot be that American artificial wine ends up on the German market," howled Farm Minister Horst Seehofer, "German quality will be drowned by cheap laboratory wines!"
But in the end, keeping their traditional names was more important than banning our pharmaceutical crud. “The EU will do its utmost,” promised European Farm Commissioner Franz Fischler, “to achieve better protection for regional quality products. from Europe's Roquefort cheese to India's Darjeeling tea, from Guatemala's Antigua coffee to Morocco's Argan oil.”
To the US and other trading partners, a little uneasy about this statement, he retorts, "This is not about protectionism. It is about fairness.”
Wines and spirits are currently held to a higher level of “fairness” than other products. Blacklisted wine names, for instance, are prohibited even when paired with the wine’s true origin, as in “Finger Lakes Champagne.” Ditto such qualifiers as -style, -kind, -type and –imitation, as well as “Traditional Expressions,” a category including things like the Sherry descriptors “cream,” “tawny” and “ruby.”
Food producers fear this is but the EU nose under the tent. Hog-tying food this way could be catastrophic, considering the old-country origins of most of our cuisine. If the EU prevails, even pseudo-generics like cheddar, parmesan and Dijon mustard will go. Never mind if it was US manufacturers who made a brand famous. Or even if it holds a US trademark.
Because as far as the EU is concerned, American trademarks count for bupkus, even as their own Geographical Indicators are sacred. The EU currently recognizes around 600 GIs in Europe versus none in America: Parma ham - IN, Florida oranges and Idaho potatoes – OUT. A French producer may call his wine Kiwi, despite protests from Down Under, but Anheuser-Busch is stripped of its Bud™ and Budweiser™ in the EU.
While we value trademarks to protect intellectual property, Europe safeguards terroir, the concept that place matters more than ingredients, process or producer. This is attractive to high-interest wine buyers but impenetrable to the rest. While collectors of Grands Crus no doubt know their Left Bank from their Right, the average drinker is confounded just keeping up with the main eight or nine grapes.
What’s more, Americans, for the most part, don’t particularly care where their food and wine comes from. The Office of Champagne has been running a series of magazine ads that begin with a statement like: “Gulf Shrimp from Nebraska?” or “Monterey Jack from Alaska?” then segue on to the horrific proposition: “Champagne not from Champagne!?” Pardonez-moi, but I suspect that far from resonating for most Americans, this backfires. Our reaction to “Valencia Oranges from Maine?" is liable to be, “Cool! Must be some new hydroponic thing.” Even ardent foodies here seldom notice from whence their shrimp were farmed or their milked squeezed. As for Monterey Jack, I doubt it’s occurred to one in a million taco eaters that Monterey is a place, let alone where the hell it is, and that it should matters. And who is Jack, anyway?
Most wine consumers just want to know what to expect in the bottle. Varietal labeling (Shiraz, Chardonnay) took off here not because we particularly care about the grape, but because it was easier. We can count on something labeled “Merlot” to be dry, red and taste something like the last one we had.
Australia sees justice at the end of the tunnel. Their trade body theorizes that as Port and Sherry are phased out and “Vintage Liqueur” or “Fortified Red Stuff” phased in, consumers will gradually forget all about those once-generic Euro names. Instead of being the beneficiary of our marketing and consumers as they are now, eventually Europe and its archaic appellations and regulations will be left out in the cold.
© Copyright 2006. All rights reserved.
