6 ms·

I had no idea that Grana Padano was a PDO. I can't help but feel that going around cease and desisting people that are passionately pursuing hobbies is a reall

• howlgarnish 6y ago
  Champagne continues to maintain a pretty solid price premium though? The case of Moet-Chandon is instructive: the French variety usually retails for a solid $20/bottle more than Chandon's Australian or Californian wines, even though they're all made by the same house and the same methode champenoise.
  • vertis 6y ago
    But that's exactly my point. I hear people talking about bottles of 'Moet', not champagne. I've been given or bought several Moet-Chandon bottles over the years, and I would not be able to tell you with certainty whether they were filled with wine from the Champagne region. Anecdotal for sure. I would also argue that you could use any reasonably French sounding place name, 'Trois-Rivières' and people would make assumptions.
    • howlgarnish 6y ago
      The price premium applies to all champagne though. Even the cheapest ones (eg the one at Aldi) start from $30, while basically indistinguishable if not superior prosecco/cava/sparkling can be had for $10.
      • alkonaut 6y ago
        Putting a good $15 bottle on the table doesn't tell your friends "I really want to celebrate this. It's a special occasion to me". The $35 champagne that might inded be worse, does. Especially if you are the kind that often drinks the $15 ones! And that's imho the selling point of (at least the lower end) champagne. I still do that occasionally. A $20 difference is a pretty small price for a "signal". It's not stupid just because the content is indistinguishable. I pay for the label - because the label is the effect! It's the product! That's also why such producers need to be careful with others using their name. They are selling a name while everyone else is selling wine.
        • Spivak 6y ago
          I must be in a casual social circle because a popping a 5 bottle of bubbly is just as celebratory. The idea of getting out “the good alcohol” for a special occasion is so foreign to me.
    • navaati 6y ago
      "Trois-Rivières" does sound French, but it also totally sounds "rum", not wine ;)
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  • slumdev 6y ago
    Terroir matters. And most of the price difference results from cachet anyway. A benefit of living in France is that there are plenty of great wines available for less than 10 Euros. They don't get exported because, I'd imagine, it's probably not cost-effective to do so.
• apexalpha 6y ago
  The problem is that there are always others who will piggyback of your product to boost their own sales, while not maintaining the quality standards that led to the name recognition in the first place. In California they also sell "Californian Champagne", some legal quirk allows it. There is no problem with their wine, it's fine wine (the one time I had it). It's just NOT Champagne. That doesn't make it bad wine, but it's just distinctively not the same product. Just like Prosecco is also not Champagne. And if you don't protect your name soon "Champagne" doesn't mean anything anymore, including for the original, quality maintaining, wine makers from the Champagne region in France.
  • Scaevolus 6y ago
    PDO laws don't have standing in the United States, so you can buy domestic Parmesan and Champagne wjthout difficulty.
    • freeflight 6y ago
      How comparable is that to ignoring other countries trademarks/patents? Couldn't the same argument be used to justify Chinese patent/IP theft, as American patent law does not apply in China? What are the legal difference here why one of these is defensible because of "not their jurisdiction", and the other is something whole economies get sanctioned over even tho patent jurisdiction also doesn't apply?
      • twoodfin 6y ago
        There are international conventions & treaties, to which the US is a signatory, that codify international trademark and IP law.
        • freeflight 6y ago
          But the US being signatory to something does not mean that everybody else is a signatory too. The closest to that I could actually find is the World Intellectual Property Organization for trademarks. But afaik copyrights and patents entirely depend on separate registrations in the individual countries, the only thing the WIPO helps with patents is simplifying the patent application process by filing it in multiple countries for the applicant, but those filings can still be denied by the individual countries. [0] In that context I just find it a bit curious how American "trademark" theft of EU PDO is handwaved away with "no jurisdiction", yet the American government still insists that its patents, trademarks and IP be respected everywhere around the world, even in places where it too has no jurisdiction. [0] https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/does-your-us-patent-trademark-or-copyright-protect-you-overseas https://www.legalzoom.com/articles/does-your-us-patent-trade... edit: Apparently the WTO TRIPS Agreement actually covers geographical indications, and the US is a member to that [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPS_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIPS_Agreement
• jankotek 6y ago
  You have no idea how regions in EU works. They do not get money from cheap water produced abroad, it only dilutes their brand.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• Angostura 6y ago
  You have to defend it, or you lose it. Like trademarks.
  • gruez 6y ago
    I'm skeptical of this excuse, considering megacorps don't seem to be this zealous about defending their trademarks. For instance, Mcdonald's doesn't seem to mind people making youtube videos on how to make big mac sauce[1]. There's plenty of videos that don't even have the "style" qualifier and even go as far as claim it makes the original sauce. [1] https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=big+mac+sauce https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=big+mac+sauce
• curryst 6y ago
  > The mind share for that word went down. Instead we found ourselves hearing people asking for Prosecco or bubbly. Champagne might now be able to assert that only the'quality' product from their region has the name, but I suspect it's just caused the companies that produce wine to make sure that they own the trademark, and push their brand, not the term champagne. Regardless of whether it's from that region. I haven't noticed a substantial change. Most people in the US I meet that aren't really into wine still use "champagne" to refer to sparkling wine. I was actually looking at making mimosas the other day and picked out a bottle of okay sparkling wine (it seems silly to mix expensive wine with OJ to me), and my SO commented that mimosas she thought mimosas had to use champagne. I picked her brain about it (I was shocked someone would pay for champagne for a normal Saturday mimosa), and she thought champagne was a totally distinct thing from sparkling wine. She thought sparkling wine was force carbonated like beer, or maybe just flat wine mixed with seltzer water like a wine spritzer. She didn't know what prosecco was, and when I told her, she said she would call that champagne. I don't think their campaign has had much of an effect on the average American. It makes a difference to connoisseurs, but the average American doesn't know the technical difference (and likely has never had true champagne, because of the relatively high price). I find that's generally true of culinary things in America, though. Many of my friends buy their wine from gas stations and are happy with it, which I struggle with. They typically only stock bottom of the barrel stuff like Barefoot; the white wines taste more like apple juice with vodka mixed in it than a real wine. The reds are generally exceptionally sweet; even full bodied reds lack the flavor and feel of tannins (probably to increase the appeal among people that hear cabernet sauvignon is a good wine, but don't know they don't like full bodied wines). It's really a shame. There are some quite good wines in the cheap range (especially if you go for less traditional regions, like South Africa), but gas stations don't carry them and people tend to judge the region for unfair reasons. I get shocked looks if I open a bottle from Argentina or South Africa, as if wine is only meant for the wealthy and the grape vines can sense if they're in an economically disadvantaged country and will refuse to produce good grapes until you transplant them to a country with a higher GDP per capita.
  • vertis 6y ago
    It's an interesting counter example. I don't consider myself much of a wine connoisseur (I rarely drink at all). I do like to pay attention to it a little from a business perspective. It's one of so many interesting case studies of the differences between the perception of how it works and is owned and how it actually is. It doesn't hurt that I actually spent a bunch of my teenage years picking grapes in a wine region in Australia. The fact that I can follow them from how their grown and fill in the ownership of the wine companies and the marketing. Case in point, I'm in Estonia at the moment and among the Australian Wines on sale here is Yellow Tail. In Australia however it doesn't have much of a reputation. IMO It's not what you would pick if you were looking for a 'nice' local Australian wine. Yet it has global distribution and reach (I've seen it elsewhere as well).
• varispeed 6y ago
  Do people really get fooled by this? For example if someone buys a "champagne" made in the UK, surely they must know this is not a real thing? And if they don't know then what difference does it make? If the real champagne is out of their budget, are they going to save money or buy something else in their price range?
  • Spivak 6y ago
    Why would you say it’s not the real thing? Defining champagne to be made in a specific region of France is a cop-out. That is almost a meaningless definition because even within the region there are different types and recipes being used. It’s not like they have magical grapes. Sure it might taste a little different due to regional differences but that doesn’t make it worse or even not champagne. Whether it’s quality has to do with the vineyard rather than the geographic region. If it’s bad because it cuts corners and uses cheap ingredients then that’s the problem.
    • namdnay 6y ago
      Defining Champagne to be made in Champagne doesn’t seem like a “cop-out” to me?
• mikelward 6y ago
  Prosecco is also a DOC/PDO.