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Australia Adopts EU's Geographical Indicator System For Wine
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."
It's mostly an attempt to con people with that whole "terroir" nonsense. I drink Loire sparkling wine because it's made with the same technique as Champagne, with the same grapes, in an area that isn't that different in climate. And most people I serve it to wouldn't know the difference (it's actually slightly fruitier).
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.
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.
Eat the rich.
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.
> 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?
Go somewhere random
It was a really stupid idea in the first place. A lot of it makes some degree of sense in that it somewhat simplifies the necessary study to know what you're buying, but it's going way out of control. Probably the best example is with champagne, where Champagne, Switzerland is no longer allowed to use it's own name like it had previously to call it's sparkling wine. The village history of doing so dates back to the 17th century and the name of the village back to the 9th.
Wow, ketchup is a surprisingly complex taste. But I wouldn't expect you to know that. Besides, what about Champagne, Switzerland, under your theory it wasn't legitimate for them to call their sparkling wine champagne, even though they've been doing it for centuries prior to being told they had to stop recently. There must've been some confusion. But thank goodness that French said non, because now wine connoisseurs won't have to read the label closely, wait, this doesn't actually help that as different portions of that region aren't identical every year?
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.
rage, rage against the dying of the light
To be a Certified Sommelier, 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.
Not a typewriter
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.