Australia Adopts EU's Geographical Indicator System For Wine 302
onreserve writes with an excerpt from a site dedicated to laws affecting wine: "[L]ast week, Australia signed an agreement with the European Union to comply with the geographical indicator (GI) system of the EU. The new agreement replaces an agreement signed in 1994 between the two wine powers and protects eleven of the EU drink labels and 112 of the Australian GI's. Specifically, this means that many of the wine products produced in Australia that were previously labeled according to European names, such as sherry and tokay, will no longer be labeled under these names. Wine producers in Australia will have three years to 'phase out' the use of such names on labels. Australian labels that will be discontinued include amontillado, Auslese, burgundy, chablis, champagne, claret, marsala, moselle, port, and sherry."
Geolocation is bad. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Geolocation is bad. (Score:4, Insightful)
Australian Tokay makes me sad (Score:2)
Tokaji is mentioned in the Hungarian National Anthem, written in 1823. What are the Aussies doing with that name?
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What are the FYROMians doing with Greece's name Macedonia? Theft is a worldwide pandemic.
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Re:Australian Tokay makes me sad (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: The Macedonian naming problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Now that's an idea. Let FYR Macedonia change name to North Macedonia, it's less of a mouthful and geographically accurate.
Somehow, though, I have my doubts that the Greeks will take to it.
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It is Liqueur Tokay.
Wine trees were imported to Australia. I am not wine expert, but if they use same sort of wines, mix of grapes used in Tokaji and wine fermentation process is not patented, patent is not expired and name is not trademarked, then Aussies are free to call their wine whatever they want. They do indicate that wine is made by Morris of Rutherglen.
http://www.morriswines.com/tas [morriswines.com]
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Perhaps not as much as you think (Score:5, Insightful)
Go look up some of the double blind taste test studies done. People aren't nearly as good at telling wines apart when they don't know before hand. Wine snobs (and wine vinters even more especially) like to claim some extremely subtle differences base on the smallest thing, but the scientific evidence isn't there to support it.
Hell if you like, conduct your own experiment. It isn't that hard or expensive. Here's what you do:
1) Buy the wines to be compared. You can either buy a number of wines, or just buy two. If you buy many, you run a test where people rank them from best to worst numerically. If you buy two, buy two that are as similar as possible, but supposedly different, like same grape, same price, different region. You then do an ABX test where people get three glasses labeled A, B and X and are asked which of A or B is the same as X.
2) Assemble a panel of people. You can be on it. Get whoever you think has good taste in wine, it is all up to you. You'll need at least 10 but more is better.
3) Get two people to run the experiment for you.
4) Have person #1 fill glasses with wine, and label them with A, B, C, etc or A, B, X. They randomize what goes in which glass (for best results use a computer for randomization), and record the wine that was placed in each glass on a sheet of paper. You don't get to see it, nobody does. They write down the results only, nobody talks to them. They need to be in a room all by themselves, no peeking.
5) Have person #2 come and serve the wine to the testers, one at a time. They don't talk to person #1, just come and get the wine. They write down the results from the people's tests. Either the numerical rank of each letter, or which of A or B matched X. They can't tell the results to anyone doing the tasting, or to person #1.
6) When all people have finished testing, come and get the two papers. Match up the results to the wine on a spreadsheet.
Doing this, provided it is done properly (as in nobody looks at the papers and the two testers don't communicate) you'll get valid results. There will be no chance knowledge of what was going on could bias the results.
However, don't get mad if the result is "Nobody could tell the difference to a statistically significant amount."
Re:Perhaps not as much as you think (Score:4, Informative)
To be a Certified Sommelier [mastersommeliers.org], you must be able to tell not only vintage and country, but acidity and alcohol levels, all under blind conditions.
Yes, a lot of "wine snobs" aren't as good as they say, but it is entirely possible for people to have taste buds trained to that level.
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I have been eating a wide range of food, lots of water and plenty of wines and I can tell the difference between two bottles of the same vineyard but of two different years.
The point of the GP was that this type of statement is likely wrong. The only way to know for sure that you can tell the difference is through a double blind test as described above. Anything else is tainting the results and likely giving you a false impression.
Re:Perhaps not as much as you think (Score:4, Interesting)
It's certainly true, although not very common. I've done quite a bit of double-blind tasting. (Although, if you're comparing two vintages, nobody tells you what you're looking for, and you figure out what the difference actually is, that's pretty good.) For particularly strange years or for regions that have a lot of weather variability from year to year (France, but not California), it can be entirely possible to discern the difference between two vintages. It's often not even particularly difficult. It's just uncommon that people bother to compare two vintages side-by-side.
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One big difference though... You can train your taste buds to be more sensitive, or learn to discern more subtle differences than the untrained lay person. Whole industries depend on such "tasters", wine being one. Most distilleries, large coffee companies, ice cream companies, etc... depend on trained tasters. I rather doubt it is all a bunch of woo when several billion dollar industries depend on the advice of these people.
When I was in college I hung out with the hotel and restaurant management majo
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Simply untrue. U.S. wines have been following this convention for a long time now. While imported wine has been on the rise, the average consumer has happily bought Californian crap the whole time. (Thankfully, today's bad Californian wine is much better than that of 30 years ago.) In fact, two of the U.S.'s most popular wines are grape-labeled, not region-labeled.
Anyone who's more discerning than the average consumer hopefully has the presence of mind to either read the signs in the store or go to a wine s
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Even if they are using the grapes from Tokay in Australia, the soil is different. The soil has a noticeable effect on the wine produced, even if the grapes and methods are the same, so restrictions on regional names make sense.
Except that last time I read about this just a few weeks ago it seemed like the wine "experts" couldn't notice that it was the same white wine when they compared the same white wine to the same one with added color making it look red ... Personally I want to add that I somewhat doubt the taste of the actual color is 100% out of the equation.
Also the same wine in old/beautiful bottles also tasted better than when it wasn't in the same bottles ..
And there was some comparision of French and Californian wines w
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"Personally I want to add that I somewhat doubt the taste of the actual color is 100% out of the equation."
That would be quite easy to test: you just blind-test (both in the sense that they don't get to know which wine is which and in that they don't get to see its color) against a slightly different one and you see if they can significantly tell appart the colored/uncolored as being the same against the third one.
Re:Australian Tokay makes me sad (Score:5, Informative)
The australians are free to name their wine after the grapes. The grapes used to ferment the Tokay wine are Furmint, Muscat lunel, Zéta and Hárslevel. Of them, Furmint and Hárslevel are authochtone, that means only cultivated in Hungary and in the south of Slovakia.
If an australian vineyard is cultivating e.g. Furmint grapes and fermenting them into wine, they are free to call them Furmint, and even Furmint szamorodni (meaning "Furmint as it grows itself", made from both dry and non dry berries). But for what reason they should call it "Tokay"? There is nothing in it that justifies the name. A Tokay wine is not called "Tokay" itself, it is called "Tokay Furmint szamorodni" for instance or "Tokay Eszencia", if they are made from dry berries only.
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Oops... Slashdot is eating non-ASCII-letters. The grape is called Hárslevelü, with the ü having something that looks like two accents and not the umlaut-dots.
Re:Australian Tokay makes me sad (Score:5, Insightful)
Or to clarify: If an australian vineyard is fermenting a "Tokay" wine, they should clearly label what they are doing.
Are they fermenting an Aszú? An Aszúeszencia? A Forditás?
Tokay is really only the place where the wine was fermented, it tells you nothing about the actual type of wine you are drinking. Labelling something "Tokay" is thus misleading, if it doesn't come from Tokay. That would be like a chinese toymaker selling stuff under the label "Made in U.S.".
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I'm also disappointed at the ban on the name "port". I rarely drink but when I do it's usually port. Next time I feel like a bottle I won't know what to buy!
Re:Australian Tokay makes me sad (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm also disappointed at the ban on the name "port". I rarely drink but when I do it's usually port. Next time I feel like a bottle I won't know what to buy!
This is spot-on. The move to restrict names that originated as place names but have become style descriptors is ridiculous, IMO, and the decisions about what is protected and what isn't are purely political with no regard as to actual genericization.
It makes no sense that "Parmesan", "Sangria", and "Champagne" are geographically restricted but "Cheddar" and "Philadelphia cream cheese" aren't.
Champagne, Switzerland has been producing wine since before Dom Perignon came up with his method of making sparkling wine, but they're not allowed to label it as "Champagne"--that's because everyone knows "Champagne" is a word indicating a particular style, and calling the Swiss (non-sparkling) wine "Champagne" would confuse consumers.
Once you've recognized that, restricting the name by geography is ludicrous.
These laws actually serve to confuse consumers, not to help them--things like "port" are style descriptors in the English language. The right thing to do is to require actual claims of geography to be accurate (already the case) and let Duoro label their port as "Made in Duoro", Jerez label their Sherry as "Made in Jerez", etc.
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These laws aren't there to help consumers.
They're there to help the artisan vintners, cheesemakers and other food manufacturers. It's to prevent the giant companies spotting a product is becoming popular and make their own version for half the price (and a quarter the quality) and giving it the same name. I promise you that real Parmesan bears absolutely no resemblance to the bits removed from a verruca scraper that are put in tubs and used to be sold as Parmesan but are now usually called italian-style
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They're there to help the artisan vintners, cheesemakers and other food manufacturers. It's to prevent the giant companies spotting a product is becoming popular and make their own version for half the price (and a quarter the quality) and giving it the same name.
Artisan vintners like Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton?
Artisan vintners can easily trademark whatever name they're selling under as long as it hasn't already become genericized. This isn't about spotting new products on the rise, it's about redefining
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Champagne and port have been in the dictionary as generic terms for centuries. Just from the standpoint of IP law, pulling them out of the public domain where they've safely landed and re-protecting them is even dumber than retroactive copyright extensions--and even worse (IMO) is the attempt to legally redefine words that have widely used English meanings.
During most of that time, port has been produced only in Portugal, and within europe, the term was already restricted and not in the public domain (due to the european PDO system).
I'm from Portugal. We're a small country whose economy is in a terrible state (much worse than the global economy). One of the few exports we depend on is port wine. If the name of the wine is usurped freely, uninformed consumers merely looking for "port wine" will buy the fake, more widely marketed stuff produced by wealthier com
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Wine trees were imported to Australia.
Hungarian wine grows on trees? I did not know that.
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The following words are mentioned in the USA national anthem, written in 1815, Please do not use them anywhere else:
a, air, and, as, at, band, banner, battle, be, beam, between, blest, blood, blows, bombs, brave, breeze, bright, broad, bursting, by, can, catches, cause, conceals, confusion, conquer, could, country, dawn, deep, desolation, dimly, discloses, does, doth, draped, dread, early, ever, fight, first, fitfully, flag, flight, foe, footsteps, foul, free, freemen, from, full, gallantly, gave, glare, gl
Re:Australian Tokay makes me sad (Score:5, Informative)
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That's a New World wine thing. In general, New World winemakers are more about technique and the grape, and Old World winemakers are more about tradition and the land (terrior). Old World region labels like "Burgundy" require not only that grapes be grown in a particular area, but that the wine be made from a particular blend of grapes and in a particular way. New World region names are only region names.
Champagne, as an extreme example, is not very much about the grape variety at all. Champagne often uses
Re:Australian Tokay makes me sad (Score:5, Interesting)
I beg your pardon?
The primary three varietals used are Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Pinot Meunier. These are all three used in lots of other wines.
Yes, there are six minor varietals which are allowed to be used according to INAO rules, but these are not used enough to deserve the 'often' qualifier in your statement.
Mart
Re:Australian Tokay makes me sad (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sure they can, because EU laws don't apply to the French.
Dont't like the idea anyway... (Score:3, Funny)
Anyway back to my beer...
Re:Dont't like the idea anyway... (Score:5, Funny)
In reality you could just label everything "Plonk", have the grapes/location/year(s) in small text for those interested, and people would still buy it.
Re:Dont't like the idea anyway... (Score:5, Funny)
In reality you could just label everything "Plonk", have the grapes/location/year(s) in small text for those interested, and people would still buy it.
No, people who know Usenet would avoid it because they'd think it's so bad it got put into a killfile.
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"Terroir" is going to be shot to hell by climate change. Sure, you'll still have soil--Chablis is described as flinty, for instance--, but those notes will play second fiddle to temperature and rainfall.
Re:Dont't like the idea anyway... (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not a nationalistic/rationalistic thing. Have you tried to take Furmint grapes and plant them say, in Norway? [For the less knowledgeable, it is too far North for this plant]
I am being extreme but illustrating the main point: a wine is not only the grapes: it is the weather and the soil (and many other factors, actually). This is why most wine is also known by the year: "good" or "bad" years mostly influenced by that years's climate on a specific place.
Australia has lots of wine variety. It can stand on its own merits. There is no need to hijack names for other places, that actually mean (and taste) different.
Re:Dont't like the idea anyway... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that I, as a casual consumer, cannot know the dozens of varieties available on the market. I might think that Australian port is my favorite, but how am I supposed to find that product on a shelf after the name change? The product is "port," I've never thought of that as a Brand name. The industry has done a fairly good job communicating to the public that "sparkling wine" and "champagne" are analogous, but what's their strategy for teaching me new names for all these--"Auslese, burgundy, chablis, claret, marsala, moselle, port, and sherry"? I don't know if I have the spare bandwidth in my brain to absorb all that, especially since I don't go to a liquor store for wines more than three or four times per year and thus don't have a lot of exposure to this information.
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They get to sell liquor in the EU.
Re:Dont't like the idea anyway... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nah, Visual Basic is more like straight grain alcohol. It can really mess a computer up.
kepsev (Score:4, Funny)
Re:kepsev (Score:5, Funny)
hahah, welcometo'straya, ya dickhead!
ffs, honestly. We're a country founded on (probably your) criminals, and we have a habit of making words our own. It's a crim thing. Try it one day. It's no big deal really. We're not changing for you faeries up North, except maybe if we wanna make some money out of ya'.
Having said that, time to pass the grammar buck and have a whinge of me own; Can you please tell citizens of the USA English by default is not from the US, it from England. Funny that. When I download software with English, I expect it to default to use words like 'centre', 'colour', 'armour', 'aluminium' et al. Fix it arsehats, or I'll find another Slashdot article to bemoan my muelings until my beer runs out and then I'll whine about that, to. Hell, even my browser and linux install are set to UK English and are still telling me I just misspeeled all that.
And soccer is a valid word. English made it same time as football. Probably because they, like us, have other kinds of footy. So shut up Euro-trash.
P.S. I bet you're a Pom. And yeah me grammar sucks wewt!
Re:kepsev (Score:5, Funny)
P.S. I bet you're a Pom.
Wrong guess. It was my ancestors that first spotted [wikipedia.org] and mapped [wikipedia.org] Australia, but saw that it was such a godforsaken place that they happily left it for the Brits.
Re:kepsev (Score:5, Informative)
Funny that. When I download software with English, I expect it to default to use words like 'centre', 'colour', 'armour', 'aluminium' et al.
Humphrey Davy, the Englishman who discovered it, named it aluminum. It's not our fault the Brits screwed up the spelling on that one later on.
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Re:kepsev (Score:5, Insightful)
Created MTV.
Re:kepsev (Score:5, Insightful)
We make some of the worlds best red wines, we are quite comfortable with our pronunciation.
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Please, learn to spell Aussie before telling us how we should pronounce things. Oh, and if anyone was pronouncing 'Cab Sav' as 'kepsev' it's most likely you were in South Africa, rather than Australia.
We make some of the worlds best red wines, we are quite comfortable with our pronunciation.
I'm Australian of French origin and have seen both spellings frequently. Also props on Sham pain and his cousin sham pagnee, that was a true example of butchering at its finest.
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please teach the Ozzies
(pronounced with nasal Texan accent)
Go on. I give up. What am I missing here?
Re:kepsev (Score:5, Funny)
So long as I can still get goon for $10/5L... (Score:2)
As a college student currently study abroad in Australia (Where all kinds of alcohol *except* wine are ridiculously expensive!) this change doesn't mean much to me. I'm hardly a wine connoisseur though, and while labels like "port", "champagne" and "burgundy" make it easier to identify exactly what a specific kind of wine is, its really just brand recognition. Sounds like both parties stand to benefit financially from this deal, so have at it! ...While the rest of you argue about countries and branding I'll
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(apparently I can't speak english very well either... must be trollyed! s/study/studying)
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No, it's not brand recognition, it's type recognition. Port and Champagne and Burgundy tell you what kind of taste to expect... will it have bubbles, will it be red, and how strong. This is an attempt to reclaim the use of words that stopped having a brand or regional meaning a very long time ago. Expect to see the same with Feta and Parmesan cheese, for example.
It's not quite like Chrysler reclaiming the Jeep trademark because that was an actual brand (even if they were late to the party in reclaiming it),
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Both Feta and the proper name of Parmesan enjoy "protected designation of origin" status within the EU already, as well as plenty of other foods such as Parma Ham.
Sure, but it's BS because they were in common use worldwide to describe the kind of product as opposed to the origin, well before the EU became the EU.
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Yeah. It's beer with food and vodka otherwise. Why would anyone want to gulp down rotten fruit juice?
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Champagne is only allowed to be called champagne if it comes from a very small and specific region in France. If it's not from there, it's just sparkling wine.
France has a lot of protected labels like this: you may only call your product by a certain name if it is made in the right region, with the right ingredients, and the right processes.
Re:So long as I can still get goon for $10/5L... (Score:4, Insightful)
No, not really. The whole "Champagne" battle between the EU and the US a few years ago just left everyone thinking it was the US that were the assholes. Champagne comes from champagne. End of story. Want to make a similar style somewhere else? Call it after your own region, make your own name instead of piggybacking on someone else's hard work.
What it showed the world is that the US only cares about trademarks when it's to their benefit. Which is fine, but if its citizens could stop pretending to live in a free and fair nation, the rest of us will get off your backs.
Napa Valley, China (Score:4, Interesting)
What it showed the world is that the US only cares about trademarks when it's to their benefit.
This is true. I recall a few years ago when the EU's appellation rules were being enforced. There was an interview with a douchbag former VC wine Napa Valley "investor" who was "incensed" that the EU was restraining his trade by limiting what he could call his wine during export. Everything was going swimmingly until the EU winemaker, who had as usual been dumped on by the US interviewer and the douchbag for being some kind of crypto-socialist, produced a bottled wine variety with the appellation of "NAPA VALLEY" in huge letters, and in tiny letters "China", telling them he had bought it at a trade show a few weeks ago. Needless to say, the Napa Valley douchbag didn't think this was fair *at all*, and wanted a stop to this sort of thing.
Pot, meet kettle.
More EU stupidity. More AU cowtowing. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is ridiculous. If I buy a Chablis or a Burgundy I want a particular type of wine. So what that these wines originated in certain regions in France? I don't give a damn where it was made. I would say most people who drink them don't know or care either. The end result is that if I buy a Chablis in Australia they will need to call it "dry white". This doesn't help consumers, but it does help some wine producers in France trying to get a monopoly. I'm told by a French friend who is a wine buff that the Aussie wines he can buy are superior to French wines (seriously), so this makes the whole thing sound like a ploy to recapture an ailing market.
Banning moselle, port, and sherry? What idiot agreed to this? (BTW I thank OP for not capitalising the first letter of these very generic names.)
I suggest Aussie wine makers label their bottles "Not moselle", "Not port", "Not sherry". Nice way to thumb their noses at certain diary product-eating pacifist primates and the bureaucrats who agreed to this.
Re:More EU stupidity. More AU cowtowing. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not a wine buff, but I've found that Australian, Chilean, South African and Californian wines are generally both better and cheaper than French wines. There are some really great French wines, but 99% of them are overrated.
When it comes to European wine, I prefer Italian anyway.
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Australian, Chilean, South African and Californian wines are better value for money than French ones.
No need to be a be a wine buff to realize that.
It is because the French cannot compete in terms of value for money that they want to protect their appellations.
What they can compete in is in terms of quality, and their Appellations d'Origine Contrôl
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well, Port is the name of the city from where Port wine comes from. And the same goes for many of those names. Of course it is wrong to call a wine Port when it doesn't come from where it says! It's the same as if someone started labelling their products "proudly made in the US" when they weren't, as long it still "felt like a u.s. product" (which is basically your argument).
The generic name for Port-like wines is "fortified wine" and not "Port". "Scotch whiskey" is whiskey that comes from Scotland, and not
Re:More EU stupidity. More AU cowtowing. (Score:4, Insightful)
well, Port is the name of the city from where Port wine comes from. And the same goes for many of those names. Of course it is wrong to call a wine Port when it doesn't come from where it says!
This is wrong. There is no city named "Port". Strict EU-controlled port comes from all over the Douro region of Portugal.
It's the same as if someone started labelling their products "proudly made in the US" when they weren't, as long it still "felt like a u.s. product" (which is basically your argument).
Do you refuse to eat sandwiches unless they're made in Sandwich, cheddar cheese that's not from Cheddar, or Belgian waffles that aren't from Belgium? Do you get really confused when your Russian or Italian dressing is made in the USA, or your Roman candles and Venetian blinds are made in China?
Are you outraged that most Brazil nuts come from Bolivia and confused about how a salon can offer a French manicure and a Brazilian wax when none of the employees are from France or Brazil?
Port, champagne, parmesan, and many other words that originated as geographic monikers have long since become English words with stylistic (rather than geographic) meanings.
Re:More EU stupidity. More AU cowtowing. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're splitting hairs. The city is properly written "Porto" or "Oporto" today. The name of the wine, "Port", is actually named after that city. The wine does in fact come from the region that includes that city, but the city exists and the wine is named after it.
The practice of using the name of a well-known wine to describe your product has two problems. One, it's actually much more recent that you suggest. Two, it was almost exclusively done to confuse consumers and get a higher price for your wine by suggesting that your wine is similar to this other, well-known style. Except that this was primarily done by early New World purveyors of crap wine (e.g., certain makers of jug wine).
In fact, the stigma caused by low-quality wine producers of a few decade ago using European place-names as false descriptors is bad enough that most good wine makers in all the New World countries do not label their wines in this fashion. This includes Australia, as a matter of fact. Good exported Australian wines all follow the grape-name convention and don't piggyback on European place-names. (One of the examples given, Tokay, is a weird exception. It's become common to refer to one of the grapes used for this wine as "Tokay", or variants. But then, there are a bunch of those old grapes that they're still trying to figure out the genetic history of.)
One of the major problems of borrowing European descriptors is that, outside of Europe, they're uncontrolled descriptors. That is, they have no legally-enforced restrictions on their use. I know you and other people here like to claim that they're useful to consumers, but that's simply not true. For wine, all uncontrolled descriptors are absolutely worthless, because they are widely abused. If you're in the U.S. and a wine calls itself "Burgundy", all you really know is that it'll probably be red. (You can also guess, because of the aforementioned stigma, that it'll suck.) If you want to make helpful comparisons, you can do it in the descriptive text, in which it's perfectly acceptable to say that the wine is made "in the style of X". The wine "name" and other front-label data should almost entirely use legally-controlled terms, because they're actually reliable and thus useful to the consumer.
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The generic name for Port-like wines is "fortified wine" and not "Port".
That's untrue. Port is a fortified wine, but not the only one by far. Amontillado, vermouth, madeira... are fortified wines too.
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No, you are wrong. From the wikipedia article:
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If I buy a Chablis or a Burgundy I want a particular type of wine. So what that these wines originated in certain regions in France?
They didn't "originate". If it's a burgundy, then it hast to come from the region of Burgundy. It's that simple. Also, for the record: if you buy a Chablis, you also buy a Burgundy. Chablis is a sub-region of Burgundy.
I don't give a damn where it was made. I would say most people who drink them don't know or care either.
Some of us haven't ruined their taste buds with bad beers and ketchup sauce, so we do care. Where the wine was produced makes a lot of difference to the taste. If you can't tell the difference, please go back to drinking Budweiser.
I'm told by a French friend who is a wine buff that the Aussie wines he can buy are superior to French wines (seriously), so this makes the whole thing sound like a ploy to recapture an ailing market.
There is no such thing as "superior", either way. There is suc
Re:More EU stupidity. More AU cowtowing. (Score:5, Informative)
> Some of us haven't ruined their taste buds with bad beers and ketchup sauce, so we do care.
But would you be able to prove that you can detect geographic differences in a double-blind taste test [winetastingguy.com]?
Re:More EU stupidity. More AU cowtowing. (Score:4, Informative)
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> Some of us haven't ruined their taste buds with bad beers ... If you can't tell the difference, please go back to drinking Budweiser.
You mean the fake Budweiser sold in the US, or beer sold in eské Budjovice (German: Budweis) in the Czech Republic?
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The problem with this argument is that more people associate Scotland with a geographic location than whisky, while more people associate Champagne with a type of wine than a geographic location. The very fact that you felt the need to qualify "Scotch" with "Whisky" is e
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It's way too late to regard them as trademarks, they aren't. I don't think it's a good idea to start making another kind of intellectual property, which is what this really is.
To me, it looks like wineries in certain parts of Europe can't take competition so they use their scheme to nose out competitors from other regions. They can't stand on their own legs with their own brands and own reputation, so they have to make this sort of odd geo-brand with the force of government. It's really another form of p
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Would you expect a "Scotch Whisky" to come from Polland? Obviously no. It doesn't preclude Japanese to make great Single Malt Whiskies. They just don't make Scotch Whiskies.
Think of it as a trademark, shared by all the producers from one geographic region. You can't buy a Macintosh from Hewlett-Packard, can you? So why should you be able to buy a Burgundy from someone that isn't located in the region of Burgundy, and therefore doesn't share in the trademark?
(Emphasis mine)
But there's a system in place for establishing and protecting trademarks and the regional producers never used it. Generally, once you stop protecting a trademark, you lose it. Why are they able to fight this now so late in the game?
AOC (Score:2)
Marketing would be my guess (Score:2, Insightful)
The US, Australia, and others have gotten really good at making wines. Good likes winning top awards at international festivals good. This pisses off the French. Wine was supposed to be THEIR thing. When the Americans first started making wine they were supportive because they thought it was cute. "Oh you go and make your cheap wine, it is much worse than ours but it is ok for cheap stuff." Then American wine started beating theirs and they got huffy.
That is somethign that has always perplexed me about alco
Re:Marketing would be my guess (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry, but you really don't understand this. This has nothing to do with the French despite the number of wines and products from France involved.
Did you notice the mention of Port and Tokay? Those are Portuguese and Hungarian products. They're every bit as interested in protecting their unique products and names.
However the central issue here is trade within the European Union. The external markets are really just secondary to the internal trade within the EU.
The EU is working hard to create a level playing field between the different EU nations [and companies within the region]. To ordinary consumers and citizens this might seem strange sometimes, however I can assure you that the reasoning is very sane.
You might not care about where they come from, but as producers and consumers we certainly do care. What you call "common names" is in reality not that, a Port has it's origins in Portugal, you might not understand this but I can assure you many Europeans do.
In many ways it's both a matter of national and regional pride, and a matter of preserving culture and jobs. It's especially interesting in the context of globalization but also within the increasingly unified European Union. In the face of ever increasing competition centuries old names suddenly need to go from merely respected names to actual legal trademarks.
This has nothing to do with the freedom to create similar products, but you may not abuse the names in the European market. If you wish to sell your [for example Australian] product in Europe you must respect our laws on the matter.
And in case you don't know this these laws have had a much greater effect in Europe where the competition has already been forced to stop using these names. One example is the huge Danish dairy products corporation, Arla, that had to rename all kinds of cheeses that were suddenly reserved for Greek and Italian regions.
Re:More EU stupidity. More AU cowtowing. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you've missed the point. The purpose of the names like Bordeaux, Burgundy, Chianti, etc. is not to tell you that it is good, though it does usally tell you that it is at least ok. It is to tell you that it is in the style that the area is famous for. An Australian Pinot Noir might be stunning, but you can't meaningfully call it Burgundy because it isn't that style. It might be better than every wine made in Burgundy, but it still _isn't_ burgundy.
If Australia's winemakers ever cooperate enough to develop a distinct style that's consistent along say the Barossa valley say then by all means call it Barossa wine instead of Shiraz. But until then, I think it's much clearer to talk about the quality of Australian wine and use a generic name like Chardonnay rather than the name of a region in France that probably does not stylistically match the Australian wine anyway.
Even the Europeans do this. If you are making wine in Chianti and want to do something differently then you _cannot_ call your wine Chianti - because it isn't wine made in the style of that region. What it means is that when you pick up a bottle of Chianti, you know what you're buying (though not the quality). Australian Chardonnay could be anything, from a subtle unoaked variety to a monster.
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Re:More EU stupidity. More AU cowtowing. (Score:4, Insightful)
What I don't get is if these new world wines are so great, why they don't have any pride in their own regions and have to name them after places in Europe.
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Geeky wine lawyer raises a glass on Slashdot! (Score:2)
I'm not sure what a 2L law student and wine law enthusiast is doing posting to Slashdot, but given the legendary inability of most Slashdotters to gain the attention of the fairer sex, I'd say Lindsey could be a hit!
Move over NYCL, you've met your match. :-)
Sticking to "fortified" wine (Score:2)
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What's the word? Thunderbird! What's the action? Satisfaction! What's the price? Fifty cents twice!
Back in my university days, a lot of eating clubs and other student organizations were holding "French wine & Cheese" parties. My club countered with a "Wines of the Bowery Night." It featured amoung Mad Dog 20/20, other such favorites as Thunderbird and Night Train. They tasted very god-awful, but after a few swigs, you were too toasted to really give a damn.
I think everyone there remembered havi
Pf, Wine (Score:3, Insightful)
Decent people drink beer, not wine. And since all good beer comes from Belgium, there is no need for geolocation of names.
P.S.: I know that good beer also comes from other countries, but accounting for that would require a different argument.
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Even within Belgium, there are different areas specialized in different kind of beers.
I don't know about Belgium, but I know that there are 57 different wine appellations in the region around the French city of Bordeaux alone.
Australia - the rising world wine power! (Score:2)
I like the idea of Australia being a major wine power.
Suppose the US, China or Russia tried to attack us, being superior military powers.
We simply get their military drunk, and we win.
He who rules the vine, rules the world! Bwahahaha!
Beer drinkers are worried about this... (Score:3, Funny)
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would you be happy if you ordered a scotch and instead got some $9/bottle shit whiskey like fleishmanns
I'd be happier if I ordered Scotch and got Yamazaki (or even Connemara) than Famous Grouse or J&B.
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you order european cola, you get cola, you order australian cola, you get fanta. Now you'll order cola, and get cola.
I think it's probably closer to this:
You order European Coke, you get Coke [Coca cola]
You order American Coke, you get Pepsi [Pepsi cola]
You order Canadian Coke, you get OpenCola [For all those FOSS zealots out there]
Now you order Coke, you get Coca cola
Fanta and Cola are a bit too different from each other that people who aren't particularly good with flavours would actually notice.
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The current system, where any wine producer can just stick any place name on their wine, doesn't make sense.
It'd be like seeing something labeled "Scottish salmon", when in fact it was caught and processed in Norway.
That's not the current system, If you labeled salmon caught in Norway as Scottish, then you would be breaking the law. Wine names have never meant that the wine came from a specific region, you have to label where your wine is coming from(which is a much more common-sense way to figure out where wine is coming from).
I'm glad that common sense is being imposed. Not that I care very much really, but I'm certainly not against such an outbreak of common sense.
Common-sense is imposing the meaning of words from a group of self-important countries half-way around the world on your citizens?
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You're somewhat wrong.
In Europe, wine names such as "Tokaj", "Chianti", "Port", "Champagne" and many others have been trademarks bound, by law, to specific regions and types of grape and even production methods. Some of these parameters are so narrowly defined that winemakers from those regions sometimes opt to skip the protected trademark in order to have more freedom in their wine making.
Some of these legal protection schemes go back to the 18th century: Chianti in 1717, Tokaj in 1730, Port in 1756.
Champa