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April 1998

Does taste have sense of place?

Chicago Tribune
March 16, 2006
By Andrew Martin

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EPERNAY, France -- The latest advertising campaign for Moet & Chandon, the venerable champagne maker, features sexy, festive models sipping tall glasses of bubbly and the slogan "Be Fabulous."

Times do seem good at the company's sumptuously appointed tasting room, built to honor Napoleon Bonaparte, who stopped by on occasion to sip his favorite champagne. But for all its splendor, the truth is that all is not fabulous at the house of Moet & Chandon, nor at the other champagne makers in this affluent and picturesque region about 90 miles northwest of Paris.

Champagne is at the center of a decades-old trade dispute between the United States and Europe over who can use certain place names on their labels, whether it is bottles of champagne, packages of feta cheese or slabs of Parma ham.

For the makers of Moet & Chandon, the idea of serving California champagne, which is marketed by a handful of American vintners, is sacrilege. They insist that only grapes grown in the cool climate and chalky soils near Epernay deserve the honor of stamping "champagne" on their label.

"For us, champagne is not a technique," sniffed Arnaud de Mardeuil, a historian for the company. "It is about an underground, a climate that is precise."

The dispute over "geographic indications," the technical name for products whose value is tied to its point of origin, is part of the ongoing World Trade Organization negotiations that remain stalled by disputes over agriculture. A framework for the deal is supposed to be completed by a late April deadline.

Much of the debate at the WTO is over lowering farm subsidies and reducing trade barriers. Indeed, U.S. negotiators blame Europe for holding up the talks by failing to provide more access to its markets, and they generally dismiss geographic indications as a minor irritant.

But making progress on geographic indications is a top priority for some members of the European Union, particularly those from southern Europe, like France and Italy. There, producing high-end niche products is a crucial part of their strategy to keep farmers viable in an increasingly competitive and global agricultural marketplace.

"It is not our policy to compete on cheap farm products worldwide," said Christian Berger, the agricultural attache for the French Embassy in Washington.

"One of the reasons for [geographic indications] is to maintain our lifestyle. If a small cheese is protected, then the whole town is maintained. ... And we don't want cheap imitations from China competing with the real thing."

Widespread examples

The concept of geographic indications is not unique to Europe, though it claims far more than anyplace else because its food and wine has been exported so successfully throughout the world. Other geographic indications include Darjeeling tea from India, tequila from Mexico and Idaho potatoes, Florida citrus and Washington apples in the United States.

In fact, the idea of using local names is increasingly popular among some American farmers who, like the French, have given up on trying to compete based on quantities of low-priced commodities and are focusing on higher-quality niche products. For instance, South Dakota is marketing "South Dakota beef," Rhode Island dairy farmers are selling "Rhody Fresh milk" and Alaska fisherman are touting "Copper River salmon."

As part of the WTO negotiations, the European Union, along with allies that include India and Thailand, would like to beef up protections for geographic indications for such products as olive oil and cheese to make it more difficult to capitalize on their names. Currently, the higher level of protection is provided only to wine and spirits, except for those that are considered generic names like champagne.

The EU also is pushing a far more controversial proposal, one that has drawn the ire of American food companies and negotiators for the U.S., Canada and Australia, among other countries. The EU is asking the WTO to recognize more than 40 product names as geographic indications that originated in Europe but were made popular in America and elsewhere as European immigrants moved abroad. They include champagne, ouzo, Chianti, cognac, port, Asiago, Parmesan, Roquefort, Parma ham and feta.

In essence, the EU is asking foreign companies to give them their names back. But opponents argue that the names are so generic that consumers liken them to a product, not a place, and that existing WTO protections and trademark laws are adequate to protect geographic indications.

"When a consumer picks up a can of Kraft Parmesan, do they think it came from Italy?" asked one senior U.S. trade negotiator. "From an [intellectual property] perspective and from a commercial point of view, it's totally unacceptable."

Among the steep vineyards and quaint towns that compose the champagne regions, the growers and bottlers never have counted on global trade talks to resolve their problems with Korbel Champagne Cellars and E. & J. Gallo Winery, whose California champagnes are the best-selling sparkling wines in America.

Wine, spirits first targeted

Negotiations began in the early 1980s between European winemakers and the United States on a wine and spirits deal. On Friday, the Europeans agreed to accept American winemaking practices they had dismissed as inferior, such as using oak chips instead of more traditional oak barrels to age wine. In exchange, the U.S. agreed to prohibit American vintners from using such European names as Burgundy and Champagne on their wine bottles.

But there's a catch: A grandfather clause allows American companies that already have the names on their labels to continue doing so, pending further talks set to begin in a few months.

This time around, the Europeans have lined up some U.S. allies to help them: winemakers from Napa Valley, Washington and Oregon. At a news conference in Washington on Monday, Napa Valley winemakers said the Napa name has appeared on wines made in China and on U.S. wines containing little or no Napa wine grapes.

"We have great solidarity with our friends in Europe," said Tom Shelton, the president and chief executive of Joseph Phelps Vineyard in Helena, Calif. "That solidarity is based on the fact that we see the misuse of place names as potentially being our future if we don't correct this now."

In a statement, Korbel owner Gary Heck said that his firm has been making California champagne for more than 124 years.

"In all likelihood, we have done more to promote the term `champagne' in the United States than any producer from the Champagne region of France," Heck said.

Strong champagne sales

For all their efforts to resolve the dispute over names, the French champagne industry is hardly struggling. The French sell about 300 million bottles of champagne a year compared with 30 million in 1950.

"It's a good job, and it's well paid," said Pierre Cheval-Gatinois, whose family has owned vineyards in the tiny hamlet of Ay since 1696. "We don't have many problems."

Cheval-Gatinois makes about 75,000 bottles of Gatinois champagne each year and exports 70 percent of it to other European countries, the U.S. and Japan, where he travels every other year for a whirlwind tour that leaves him "exhausted, like after love."

But he maintains that they need to "fix the problem" with the name champagne so that his children and grandchildren can maintain the same lifestyle that his 17 acres of champagne grapes provide.

"Our power comes from the uniqueness of our appellation," Cheval-Gatinois said, as he sipped vintage champagne in a room filled with art, a piano and an old grape press above his champagne cellars. "Champagne is not big. But there is only one."

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