‘Champagne of beers’ falls foul of French protections

Belgian customs have destroyed almost 2,400 cans of US-brewed beer bearing the slogan “The Champagne of Beers”, France’s Champagne Committee said Tuesday (18 April), in the latest episode around the bubbly’s fiercely-protected designation.

The cargo of 2,352 Miller High Life cans was seized in the port of Antwerp in early February but only destroyed on Monday, the Comite interprofessionel du vin de Champagne (CIVC) said in a statement.

Miller’s slogan “represent(s) an infringement of the protected designation of origin Champagne,” it complained.

“The consignee of the cans in Germany… did not contest the decision” after the Champagne Committee “requested the destruction of these illicit goods,” it added.

The powerful CIVC, which groups the famed eastern French region’s 16,200 growers and 360 brands, tracks anyone in the world seen as hijacking the Champagne name.

Under European regulations, “goods that infringe a protected designation of origin… are counterfeit,” the committee highlighted.

The destruction of the beers — which the committee insisted was done in an environmentally responsible manner — “confirms the importance that the European Union attaches to designations of origin and rewards the determination of the Champagne producers to protect their designation,” committee chief Charles Goemaere said.

The Champagne Committee tackles about 1,000 cases of alleged misappropriation of its moniker in 80 countries each year, its lawyers told AFP in 2021.

One rare case of blowback came in June that year, when Moscow decreed that only Russian-made bubbly can be called “champagne” while the French product must be labelled “sparkling wine”.

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