Decanter World Wine AwardsFerran Adria, Ducasse, Robuchon lend support to wine origin campaign
- Sunday 30 October 2011
Rioja: Protecting the name
El Bulli's Ferran Adria, The French Laundry's Thomas Keller, Pontus Elofsson from Noma and respresentatives from world-renowned restaurants including Joel Robuchon, Wolfgang Puck and Alain Ducasse have signed an open letter lending their support to protect wine place names.
Jose Andres, who has restaurants in Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Washington DC said, 'We support the Joint Declaration to protect wine place and origin because place names are central to understanding the foods and wines we work with every day'.
In a deal signed last year between US and Europe, the United States has agreed to prevent new wine producers from using the names ‘port’ and other semi-generic names such as Sherry and Burgundy. But agreement has a ‘grandfather clause’ that allows producers in the market before March 2006 to continue the practice in some cases.
The Declaration to Protect Wine Place and Origin, a coalition first formed in 2005, has the support of 15 wine regions including Champagne, Jerez, Porto and Napa.
According to the Napa Valley Vintners Association, producers from countries as diverse as Germany and China have put ‘Napa’ or similarly misleading labels on their wines.
With the support of chefs and, food and wine experts, the coalition hopes that this will persuade lawmakers to better protect wine place names.
Have your say!
Joel Watson
February 01 23:07
Mr. Frank Schoonmaker and Tom Marvel started a campaign in the 30’s and 40’s to have California and New York wine makers stop using French, Italian, Spanish and German names to fool the public into thinking there were drinking wine from some other place other than California or New York wine. The term back then was Hokum wine labels. They were not all that effective in getting wineries to change their labeling for some time.
This is understandable as most wineries after prohibition had non-wine making grapes because these grapes could be shipped to the east coast and remain in good condition. Wine grapes did not have the hearty skin and often were spoiled by the time they reached Chicago and cities further east. So wineries in those days had to do with what they had planted. They had not financing to replant with, so the solution was add sugar, acid, coloring and flavoring to bring the wine up to a drinkable level and then put a fancy European label on the bottle. E Voila we have French or German wines.
The responsibility of keeping the public aware of such Hokum labels if in the hands of the tradesmen: importers, wholesalers, retailers and sommeliers. If a customer wants a bottle of Port the tradesman should let him know that the establishment only carries California or New York State Port or whatever and that he does not carry any authentic Port at this time.
I began in this business back in 1967 and people back then did take pride to present the truth about a wine’s origination then follow up with comments about the taste. I guess today people do not see their responsibility to the customer and do not take the time to make the customer aware of what he is drinking.
This is a sad commentary on the industry itself because our customers depend on us to protect their interest.
Sergio Peter Lazar
November 02 10:42
The wines origin should be protected and respected,alone because of his fondamentel
birth place, this
facilitate ny Sommeliers and wine
lover too be able to identify
originalaty of wine and state and
place.
Tim Carlsle
November 01 14:48
The US getting upset about name misuse? You've got to laugh - perhaps we should mention the word 'Champagne' to them? Now only used for the cheapest rubbish sparkling that USA can make!
Kevin Beck
October 31 15:16
Get rid of these stupid grandfather clauses that protect usurpers! They should have to rename and rebrand their counterfeits.