American champagne!

[Chancer]

I just saw on the news that 10 million (I think! perhaps it was dix milles) bottles of counterfeit champagne "provenance des etats-unis" were seized by the Duanes either in or crossing the border from Belgium.

The bottles were marked champagne & with the vinyard etc, the labels looked like the genuine French ones destined for the export market i.e. labelled in English.

They showed them being crushed in a skip and the fluid being drained off into another receptacle didnt look very tempting! they confirmed that the American exporter was paying for the cost of seizure and destruction.

Why on earth they thought that they could pass it off as the genuine article in europe defies me, I bet the wish that they had just sold it in the USA or perhaps the consumer laws are stronger there.

[Frederick]

There will always be those who think  they can get away with it ........At the Benedictine distillary in Fecamp there is a display of all the dodgy bottles down the years that people have tried to pass off ......lots and lots of them ......Worth a visit if anybody is in the area .....If you guess the 20 odd herbs and spices they use to make it .....they will give you a case ....I think its impossible  but you could strike lucky .....!

[Hagar]

According to RTL the shipment ( 3,300 bottles) was in transit to Nigeria.

It is actually the americans that are lax in standards - they don't recognise the AOC system nor the european "Protected designation of origin" rules.

In the USA you can call any old bottle of fizz " champagne". In Europe you cannot even label a bottle "methode champenoise" (i.e made in the same way as champagne) unless the wine comes from Champagne. That latter point gets up the nose of the producers in Limoux as they beleive they invented the method and champagne copied it.

rgds

Hagar

 

 

 

[Chancer]

That is fascinating Hagar!

It must have been taking a devious route to have been intercepted in Belgium, what are the Nigerian fraudsters going to use now to celebrate if they ever are successfull in one of there scams?

On the program they also showed a bottle of what I recall was Ethiopan "Shampagne"[:)]

[artsole]

Just an interesting side note: There are more and more demands for champagne in the world, Russia and the far east in particular, consequently, the 'Champagne region' cannot supply enough of the stuff...........so, typically French ( when the government sees that it is possibly losing money) they are starting to widen the 'appellation. There are other regions in France that make perfectly good bubbly but the Champagne producers have fiecely guarded their right to call bubbly 'Champagne'. This is probably a sticky point with many people but I believe Champagne has been overpriced for too long and there needs to be a change, its like many things, you pay for the name and not neccessarily the quality?

[woolybananasbrother]

It is actually the americans that are lax in standards - they don't recognise the AOC system nor the european "Protected designation of origin" rules.

Frankly I am partly with the Americans on this. Most of the rules are just phoney protectionism and are abused to suit the producers. Take the case of Camembert. It should not be called that if it uses pasteurized milk as it ain't the original.

And what about Feta cheese, now made only in Greece when it had been made in UK and Denmark for forty odd years. Pure politics

The whole system fails to function under mass production and should be revised.