Swiss village can't use its name on wine. (It's "Champagne")

[Robin Garr]

Swiss village loses European court case to name its wine champagne
International Herald-Tribune
August 22, 2007

CHAMPAGNE, Switzerland: A group of winemakers from the Swiss village of Champagne have lost a legal battle to attach the town's name to locally-produced wine, a local official said Wednesday.

France has fiercely resisted the labeling of any wine as champagne unless it is produced in the region of France that produces the famous bubbly.

Marc-Andre Cornu, mayor of the village on the shores of Lake Neuchatel, said the Swiss winemakers lost their case at the European Court of Justice on a technicality, confirming a report in the Neue Zuercher Zeitung.

Village authorities are vowing to continue their fight to use the champagne label.

The Swiss winemakers insist on continuing the ancient custom of naming their wine after their village, which they say has been called Champagne — with variations on the spelling — since the earliest documents available in 885 A.D.

Full story in the International Herald-Tribune

Swiss village loses European court case to name its wine champagne
International Herald-Tribune
August 22, 2007

CHAMPAGNE, Switzerland: A group of winemakers from the Swiss village of Champagne have lost a legal battle to attach the town's name to locally-produced wine, a local official said Wednesday.

France has fiercely resisted the labeling of any wine as champagne unless it is produced in the region of France that produces the famous bubbly.

Marc-Andre Cornu, mayor of the village on the shores of Lake Neuchatel, said the Swiss winemakers lost their case at the European Court of Justice on a technicality, confirming a report in the Neue Zuercher Zeitung.

Village authorities are vowing to continue their fight to use the champagne label.

The Swiss winemakers insist on continuing the ancient custom of naming their wine after their village, which they say has been called Champagne — with variations on the spelling — since the earliest documents available in 885 A.D.

Full story in the International Herald-Tribune

This one leaves me speechless.

In one way, I fully understand the French concern over protecting the proper name, Champagne, for the sparkling wine - too much cheap imitation wine has been made misappropriating this title. But if the Swiss village shares the name, then why don't they just agree to use one of the already-admitted alternate spellings of the word so as to make the distinction between it and Champagne in France, and keep the place name on the Swiss wine?

Sounds reasonable to me.

This is old news.... the battle has been going on for years. I have a good friend who works for the Swiss Government who tells me that the village has no chance... in the end, the French will pervail.

The BBC published a heart felt human interest story about this dispute five years ago -- the whole affair reminds me of the battles over the Taylor and the Gallo names in this country.

Part of the story:

For Paul Banderet, or "Monsieur Paul" as he is respectfully called by other villagers, Champagne is where it really did all begin.

Born into a family of vineyard owners who had tended the same plot of vines for generations, Monsieur Paul was given his first pair of secateurs at 14.

Since that day, for the past 75 years, he has got up at 0530 every morning and walked to his fields to prune and pick his crop.

Today, he is still working, still tending his vines and making Swiss champagne.


When I was a boy we were taught that you don't pick fights with boys who are smaller than you. So why is that great powerful France picking on little Switzerland?

Monsieur Paul, Swiss wine grower

"My life is in these vines," he tells me as he snaps off some of the dead twigs and foliage which are hiding the fruit from the sunlight.

"When I'm sad and a bit down, I sit myself by the kitchen window in my farmhouse and I look out on the vineyards and I say, 'Paul, that's your life's work there, and while there are good green grapes on your vines, there is good breath and blood left in you'."

EU deal

But the days of Swiss champagne could be numbered.

Under a series of bilateral agreements that Switzerland has just struck with the EU, the French have objected to the little Swiss village of Champagne using its name on its wine labels.

They claim that champagne is their trademark and only they have the right to use it.

It has infuriated the Swiss villagers.

They have banded together in protest and are taking the matter before the European courts.

When I ask Monsieur Paul what he thinks about the argument, he shakes with emotion.

"When I was a boy we were taught that you don't pick fights with boys who are smaller than you," he says wagging his finger at me.

"So why is that great powerful France picking on little Switzerland?

"I don't claim to make bubbly champagne with posh corks like the French.

"I make Swiss champagne which is simple, still white and red wine and which comes in bottles you unscrew.

"If the courts make us change our name, I'm telling you straight, I will never drink another drop of French wine again."

The rest of the story continues here.

I'm with the French on this. Even though any loss to their Champagne area is likely to be very very small in this instance, there is a definite risk of confusing the consumer as well as of setting a precedent.

This makes a nice David and Goliath story for the Francophobic British media (viz. the BBC report) but there must be a pragmatic solution if tempers can die down.

I looked up a web site for Champagne, Vaud and learn that it has 667 inhabitants and a nickname, Les Champagnoux, which is itself a nickname for "champignons" = "mushrooms". What better solution than to use this nick-name?

If the Champenois object to that, they should also insist on a change in the French word for mushrooms.

As several reports have indicated (similarly to Tim's) that the village has used various spellings, one would think if the village WASN'T hoping for a sales boost by (mis)association, that they would have proposed using one of the variants long ago.

[Robin Garr]

As several reports have indicated (similarly to Tim's) that the village has used various spellings, one would think if the village WASN'T hoping for a sales boost by (mis)association, that they would have proposed using one of the variants long ago.

Well, yeah but ... if "Champagne" is the current and long-term name, this strengthens the Swiss argument, it seems to me. I mean, if York, England complains, should New York City return to using "Nieuw Amsterdam"?

Robin,
My point was that the article you quoted said they have been using the name with variations on the spelling for longer than the French. I'm curious when those variations ended, leaving the current spelling. If the variations ended in 13th century, it's one thing; if the Swiss settled on Champagne in last few centuries, its another.

In any case, if it is not a piggybacking marketing issue, why not propose "Champagne de Vaud" or "Vaud-Champagne"?

Robin wrote-

"Well, yeah but ... if "Champagne" is the current and long-term name, this strengthens the Swiss argument, it seems to me. I mean, if York, England complains, should New York City return to using "Nieuw Amsterdam"?"

The copyright for the name "York" belongs to me but I am happy to let New York use it for an annual royalty of, say, one-millionth of the city's GDP. York, England, can then use it for free.

[Robin Garr]

My point was that the article you quoted said they have been using the name with variations on the spelling for longer than the French. I'm curious when those variations ended, leaving the current spelling. If the variations ended in 13th century, it's one thing; if the Swiss settled on Champagne in last few centuries, its another.

In any case, if it is not a piggybacking marketing issue, why not propose "Champagne de Vaud" or "Vaud-Champagne"?

Good thoughts, Dale. The real key, of course, is separating the marketing issue from the local pride issue, and I'm not certain that this can be done.

Still, if I were a judge on the EU Court, I'm not sure that I'd require a 13th century provenance for the "Champagne" spelling, but it would sure make a difference whether the current name became predominant in 1785 ... or 1985.

Robin, there are lots of references to the village of Champagne in older texts; here's an example:

"Champagne, village vaudois du cercle et district de Grand- Bonmont. V. Mém. et Doc , t. XII, 1« partie, p. 211. Botens, Battens, V. Mém. et Doe., ..."

This comes from an 1852 book of place names in Switzerland, citing an earlier book whose date I can't make out.

Cartulaires de la chartreuse d'Oujon et de l'abbaye de Hautcrèt - Page 96, by Jean Joseph Hisely, Oujon, Switzerland (Monastery) - 1852.

Google Book link here.

The case in Brussels was disposed of on technical grounds, but the folks from Vaud face at least one other significant hurdle; their own government sold them down the river when the Swiss signed the agreement with France that the name "Champagne" would no longer be permitted.

Regards, Bob

[Robin Garr]

Robin, there are lots of references to the village of Champagne in older texts; here's an example:

Thanks, Bob! Very interesting as usual.

No one has asked the question, what is to be gained by the right to use the name? Suppose I came from Haut-Brion, Minnesota. I decide to make an average wine and call it Haut-Brion. You would have to be a near-geek to know my Haut-Brion was not the Haut-Brion you may have heard about. Many people, even some in the business of making wine, don't know that Les Carmes Haut-Brion and Larrivet Haut-Brion have absolutely nothing to do with Château Haut-Brion.

Similarly, when one looks at the wines in Duty Free in CDG, it's simply amazing how many inocuous wines from Bdx bearing the word(s) "La Tour" or "Latour" in their name, along with a hefty supply of Mouton-Cadet, one sees on the shelves. I'm sure that name recognition has nothing whatsoever to do with their marketing...

Mark Lipton