Salut/Hi Dana Myers,

le/on Tue, 28 Oct 2003 12:00:36 -0800, tu disais/you said:-

>Ian Hoare wrote:
>> Salut/Hi Dana Myers,

>Would you feel better about this if Gallo had put
>"Champagne-style sparkling wine" on the label?

No. There's no need to use the name champagne at all. Sparkling wine is good
enough. If they want to say more about it and say that the fizz was created
in the bottles, that all the techniques used in Champagne to make their
wines were used too, then - speaking personally, I'd have no problems with
the expression "Champagne method" in small letters somewhere. I don't agree
with the EU on this btw, but I feel that winemaking techniques shouldn't be
trademarked. But only if they did in fact use ALL the significant champagne
techniques and their wine was made at the same high pressure.

>Gallo made a beverage in the style of something consumers already
>knew and labelled it as such.

I don't think so, Dana. I think they simply made a sparkling wine and used a
prestigious name to sell it.

>> And please don't believe that I've got it in for the States over
>> this. I believe that actually France would suffer more, if prestigious named
>> products were properly protected.
>
>Ah. What's this about prestige? Is a place-based name somehow inherently
>prestigious?

Only if the eponymous product had a great reputation (merited or not).
Roquefort, for example. Personally I prefer Bleu des Causses (very like
Roquefort but less salty and made with cow's milk) to all bu the very best
Roquefort, but there's no disputing that Roquefort is the most highly
reputed blue cheese (along with Gorgonzola, and Stilton, perhaps) in the
world. I think it's entirely proper to restrict the name to the "real
thing". If that happened, then it would cause chaos in France, by the way.

> Don't overlook the impact of the producer name;

Quite true, which is yet another reason why a manufacturer with a poor
reputation does harm to the name of the product they have "borrowed".

--
All the Best
Ian Hoare

Sometimes oi just sits and thinks
Sometimes oi just sits.