If anything is guaranteed to get French wine producers in a fizz, it is the suggestion that champagne can be made anywhere outside the Champagne region in France, reports The Guardian.
As a protected appellation, the term is jealously guarded and legally defended. As the Champagne committee’s website clearly states: “Champagne only comes from Champagne.”
But in a provocative move on Friday, Vladimir Putin signed legislation requiring all non-Russian producers to mark their products in Russia as “sparkling wine” on the back of every bottle, including some of the world’s most famous and expensive bubbly.
Under the law, only locally made Shampanskoye is worthy of the prestigious and previously exclusive name, and French appellations are not recognised.
On Saturday the celebrated Champagne producer Moët Hennessy, part of the LVMH luxury group that includes Veuve Clicquot, Ruinart, Mercier, Krug and Dom Pérignon, threatened to suspend exports to Russia.
Leonid Rafailov, the director general of AST, one of Russia’s main wine distributors, acknowledged Moët’s move, telling AFP: “I can confirm I have received notification of this, and it’s justified.”
But by Monday the threat had gone flat when the company announced it would resume deliveries. “The Moët Hennessy champagne houses have always respected the law in place wherever they operate and will restart deliveries as soon as it is able to make the [label] changes,” the group said.
France has 16,200 champagne wine growers and 360 champagne houses, producing around 231 million bottles a year. Champagne is made from only three grapes: pinot noir, meunier and chardonnay. The market is worth 4.2 billion euros, of which 2.6-billion euros is exports, with the UK and US the biggest customers.
Russia imports almost 50 million litres of sparkling wine every year. French champagne represents 13% of this market, and Moët Hennessy only 2% of this.
Russian Shampanskoye is the post-USSR reincarnation of what was called Soviet champagne, a popular cheap sparkling drink created in the Stalin era in the 1930s to make a version of the elite wine that was available to all.