cdh

My brew shop told me that my yeast would be coming in tomorrow, so I'm hoping their prediction was right. We'll see if I can actually brew on saturday or not. Yeast should at least be really fresh in the smack pack...

Independently of the source of 15% (or 25%) of the grapes, yes. Here's a summary of the AVA law for those interested.

Please don't.

I was more thinking of running into somebody in a wine shop while shopping for champagne and being on the receiving end of a rant about how evil Korbel or other such are. If shrill browbeaters are called into service in the cause, then the cause is already lost. Re your beer crack... maybe I would rather a case of Rochefort 10 or Westvleteren 12 rather than a bottle of Cristal sometimes. If Champagne gets shrill and annoying, then I might just act on that impulse. You see, I'm something of a contrarian by nature-- I'm inclined to question and pick apart any command given to me, and if it is unfounded, then to ignore it. If the Champegnoise are going to step out from behind their mystique and start issuing commands, then my questioning analytical nature will be engaged. Champagne: You must only celebrate with real Champagne from Champagne! (preferably LVMH or Domecq owned products, since they're probably paying for this) Me: Oh yeah? why? Maybe I'd like to celebrate with a Burgundy or maybe a Riesling... or that lovely Gewurz that smells like roses... Champagne: No! You have always celebrated with fizzy wine, and it must be our fizzy wine. Me: Now why did I always gravitate toward fizzy wines in celebratory situations? Hmmm... thoughtless reflex, I guess... and it goes so well with the caviar. No caviar today, so I don't need to limit myself to champagne. Now what will go well with those lamb chops...

The building of a reputation is a product of investments in quality and communication, not a byproduct of regulation. A designator of origin does not create value per se. Such investments in reputation deserve to be protected exactly like investments in patents or trademarks. And if you grant protection in a specific country (based on the concept of AVAs for example), why should one refuse to grant this protection for foreign AVAs? And every house in Champagne that invests in quality and communication has a name... in fact it is their Trademark. It is protected. If I were to start a winiery and start making fizzy wine and called it Bollinger, I'd be counterfeiting their trademark. The law already covers this on the producer level. Why does it need to expand to cover the regional level too? Lots of people seem to be harping on the AVA idea... hate to burst your bubble, but nobody pays attention to them in the US market. There are plenty of non AVA wines that are of quality camparable to AVA wines. People I know do not operate on the assumption that the AVA is an elite club that winemakers strive to get into, and that membership in the AVA is a guarantee of a highest quality product. Scott- to put it in as simple terms as possible (blind idiot that I am): "Everybody else is doing it" is not a reason to do something. Just because the EU has decided to humor France's demands that wine law everywhere within the union look like french law is no reason for the rest of the world to do so. Bandwagonism is both poor rhetoric and poor logic... but maybe only in this blind idiot's view.

Well, I will gladly set aside reasoning (legal or otherwise) and continue the argument purely ad hominem, if the audience so desires. Though, Mr. Duke, as your attorney, I'd strongly advise that you open my briefcase and drink the three magnums of champagne and then...

My thinking is that champagne's cachet is a subconscious reaction... it is not reasoned, and is more akin to a cultural reflex action. If they succeed in getting most people to analyze what is champagne, people might just keep on thinking and realize that they don't like it much... even if what they don't like is the cheap fizzy wine not from France (though I'm not much of a fan of the NV bottlings of a lot of the French houses too.) When a reflex action comes under self-conscious scrutiny, it is liable to be judged and possibly rethought, whereas if it remained a simple reflex, then it is safe from such scrutiny. As a personal example, think about the sounds of certain words... they begin to sound sort of absurd when I think about them... but when I need to convey a message, I reflexively use them without thought about the absurdity of their sound. By pushing a whole national market to think hard about fizzy wine, they're taking the chance of undoing the magic of the reflex action they're benefitting from.

I had a stellar meal at Tratoria La Caterina on Pack Place in downtown Asheville... creative and well executed food. Roasted wedge of kure squash stuffed with duck confit and chunks of ricotta salata, drizzled with mint infused oil and roasted seeds of some variety made a great appetizer. The braised veal cheeks entree was similarly excellent.

Now that I think a little more about it, I'm close to convicing myself that if the Champagne growers actually do vociferously pursue this particular fight, they may be doing themselves more harm than good. In the popular mentality, the celebratory, sexy, fun drink is champagne. For a lot of people, even those who don't like it very much, fizzy wine is what gets busted out when they want to mark a milestone. If champagne becomes associated with histrionic brow-beating of the sort evidenced here recently, they'll soon find their reputation for light-hearted fun going down the tubes, and people might decide to mark their milestones with other beverages or activities that seem more fun to them. Just a thought... what say you all?

Yes. I plead guilty to one of your current accusations against me, though not one of the ad hominems (I am a reasonably pleasant guy and quality human being when my sense of legal overreaching is not riled). I am, indeed, as you accuse, morally blind in this situation. My moral sense does not extend to the realm of victimless crimes, so I believe that laws reaching into that sphere are misguided. Demonstrate to me any actual harm that arises from the current state of affairs, and I may change my mind. My perception of the situation looks like this- There is a market segment of sophisticates who know where Champagne is from. They're sufficiently sophisticated, also, to know that a bottle of Korbel is not what they're looking for in the champagne section of their wine shop. Growers in Champagne lose no sales because these people are tricked into buying the wrong product. No lost sales == no harm. There is also a market segment of unsophisticated people who aren't willing to pay the (increasingly exorbitant) prices that the growers in Champagne are asking, and still want fizzy wine with corks that go "pop!" for the celebratory events in their lives. They will buy by price, and will seldom front the cash demanded of them by the growers in Champagne. Whether the $10 bottle they buy says Champagne on it or not, the growers in Champagne are not losing a sale, since they cannot compete within the price range that this market segment is willing to spend. No lost sales == no harm. Before accusations of further moral blindness are pointed at me, I'll also admit up front that I also have trouble with the concept of intangible damage to reputation through association with tarnishingly inferior products... so if that is all you're up in arms about, we'll have to agree to disagree. I concede that such a position has recently been deemed reasonable by the U.S. Congress insofar as they've codified a law on dilution of famous brands... but were I in congress I'd not have voted for it.

OK. I'm mad at them. And at myself for not noticing that in the story. But do we trust the reporter to get that detail right anyway? It is USA Today, after all.

FG- Same machine, new grinder? What were you grinding with back in the early days of unsatiisfactory espresso? What are you grinding with now? Getting the grind right is really the key. I find that different beans need different settings, and also that the relative humidity and the season require adjustments in the grinder settings.

I think it is kind of fun, actually... I'd be mad at them if the beer in the bottles isn't a strong germanic doppelbock, as the -ator suffix does lead to that conclusion... the tradition including Optimator, Salvator, Celebrator, etc...

Products have rights? Where do these rights spring from? Sure there are some zany statutes giving producers of stuff a legal right to defend their products from some sorts of disparagement, i.e. the veggie libel statute in Texas that caught up Oprah Winfrey a few years ago. If I recall correctly (and I've not bothered to do the research), that law was tossed on US Constitutional grounds... Something about peoples rights trumping products' rights... first amendment in this case. There is obviously no statutory right that Champagne has to protection in the American legal system... it certainly may have one in France under the AOC laws, but French laws do not apply in america, nor do they generate any sorts of "rights". The AOC law imposes a duty upon the growers in a region to follow certain procedures if they desire to label their wine as coming from that particular place. I don't see the flip-side of this duty as creating a universal right. Consumers have rights-- not to be misled or lied to. What constitutes misleading depends on how a message will be interpreted by a reasonable consumer. Saying "This is Champagne" to an American consumer will not (at present... and it may change over time) bring to mind the necessary conclusion that the product in the bottle began its life 90 miles east of Paris. When (or if) American consumers come to the point of sophistication that they do make that conclusion when a bottle says champagne, and the law that allows plonk growers in California to call their plonk champagne is still on the books, then I'd get somewhere near as miffed as you are right now. Not 'til then.

No, it should not. I'm not standing here arguing that misrepresentations are right or proper. Calistoga and Anderson Valley have not developed a separate, geographically independent meaning in the minds of most consumers. Placing either name on a bottle is a clear indication of origin, and that is the only meaning imputed to those words placed on a bottle. Champagne has over time acquired a whole different meaning in the context of a bottle. While the champagnoise weren't paying attention, their geographical designator got hijacked into the popular mind with an erroneous definition attached. I see no malice in the process that led to the situation... The djinn is out of Champagne's bottle already, and stuffing it back in is a difficult and onerous process. One I don't think will ever succeed. I'm all for precision, and bottles should identify their origin... if one didn't I'd be unlikely to buy it. If a bottle labelled champagne didn't tell me it was from Rheims, or Ay or Bouzy or elsewhere in the AOC, I'd not assume it was from there... I'd assume it was sparking plonk, and probably not buy it. I don't see the need for the law to reach in here and regulate, when the market could handle it on its own.

Hear, hear!

Good calls. I'd go from a quarter lb down to a handful of the chocolate malt. The darker choc will probably have less complex flavor to give, and a lot more color. Too much might take it past nutty to roasty and you might end up with a malty porter.

Scott-- I'll ignore the uncivil snipe at the amoral legalism of myself and my fellows in the profession. I'll not, however, accept your premise of "presumed associated quality" without some variety of evidence for it. I'd wager that if a scientific poll was done of a random cross section of the American populace, you'd find that people believe that champagne means sparkling wine. If so, then champagne is a generic in the minds of the consuming public. (I'd also bet that a majority of them don't think they like Champagne, as a result of the low end plonk marketed at them under the name... this would be actionable trademark dilution, but for the fact that champagne is generic and can't be a mark in the first place absent a special law enacted to make it one.) I'd also make a snipe back at you about perceiving quality that just isn't there (in a majority of the big houses' recent NV bottlings). I also don't accept your premise about the land that originated the style holding the exclusive right to use the name... at least not in America. Look at the architypal American booze-- Bourbon whiskey... named after Bourbon County Kentucky. Not a drop of it made there today... a dry county, I believe, as a matter of fact. Is every maker of bourbon today trading unfairly in derogation of the rights of Bourbon County? I'd say not. They're paying homage and making whiskey in the style of its origination point. There is good Bourbon, there is bad Bourbon, but Bourbon is a style descriptor, not a unique identifier of origin. If I accepted your premises, I could take them one step further. Only the grapes that grow on MY particular hillside are Pinot Noir. I don't care that those grapes on the plain below are genetically identical to my grapes. It is the terroir that makes them special. Those guys can grow them all they want, but they can't call their grapes Pinot Noir. They might make really bad wines with them, and that would tarnish all the time my ancestors and I spent in breeding them. You can grow em, just get another name. You're infusing quite a lot of moral indignation into this discussion without giving any rigorous explanation of why the egregiously immoral acts happen to be as wrong as you claim they are.

well... "passing off" is generally used in the context of counterfeiting... In a sentence: "That shop was passing off cheap chinatown imitations of LV bags as the real thing." "deceptively misdescribe" is broader... no counterfeiting necessary. "The Handmade rugs were actually machine woven." or "That Grape Juice was apple juice and artificial flavorings." An owner condoning or encouraging the use of a proprietary mark in a generic context is evidence in support of cancellation of that owner's mark. You can't have it both ways... no trademarks allowed for generic words, even if you can capitalize on becoming generic. A workable strategy in this context might be to develop marks in tandem, and sacrifice one of them to genericide so as to be able to say, for example, "We're 3M, we put the scotch in your tape, so please buy ours."

They're obligated to do so under trademark law. A holder of a unique identifier of source (the legal definition of a trademark) is obligated to protect its uniqueness to the best of their abilities, or the mark could be deemed abandoned. Encouraging generic usage is a sure fire way to kill a mark.

From a legal point of view, Scott's association of mislabeling with theft actually goes beyond the (already broad) reach of the law. Theft analogies are rampant in talk about patent and copyright infringement, where there are real proprietary interests. Trademark law comes at the problem of intellectual property from a different angle-- it has historically been essentially about consumer protection, rather than brand protection for its own sake. The standards by which trademark violations are judged are all about the consumer's perceptions-- "passing off" one product as another thereby fooling the consumer, and "deceptively misdescribing" a product so the consumer thinks it is something it isn't. Is affixing the word "champagne" to a bottle of clearly labelled California wine either of the above? An analysis like Katherine's comes into play here, as actual linguistic usage is evidence of what consumers think when a description is used. It is the consumer's perceptions that are being protected, not the wishful desires of any particular user of a mark. As a thumbnail sketch of an analysis of the mark "champagne", I'd venture to say that it suffered genericide a long time ago. "Genericide" is trademark lawyer slang for a mark having fallen into generic usage and lost all capacity to identify a specific producer. Like kleenex, or xerox (despite their attempts to head that off), and (maybe) tivo.

I've got a few yixing pots, but wouldn't call them a collection. How was the Met's exhibit? Only european porcellain, or other types of pots as well? My mother is a devoted collector of all things flow blue, and has amassed a few teapots under the aegis of that collection.

Rose Champagne has been a hit at the past few New Years parties I've supplied with champagne. R. Dumont et Fils' Rose has been the most well received. Billecart-Salmon's Rose is yummy as well, but I'd take the Dumont over it. To expand into other pink fizzy wines that aren't champagne, I've tried the Michel Freres Rose Cremant de Bourgogne, and it was quite nice too... to my tastes at least. But I love pinot noir based fizzy wines, and would always pick a rose over a blanc de noirs, and a blanc de noirs over a blanc de blancs any day. There are people who just don't like the stuff, however... People claim to taste artificial berry flavoring in the roses... also claim there is a bitter aftertaste to them. I perceive neither, but I also have taste buds that love campari and espresso and pernod too, so there are very few flavors that go beyond the pale for me.

Iain- I'm very much interested in seeing what the Northern Brewer ingredients produce with this recipe. I'm in NYC all the time, so I'll gladly bring along a sixpack of mine some time in exchange for a sixpack of yours. Anybody else who happens to be in the greater megalopolis is welcome to exchange too. Once the stuff is bottled, we'll have to set up the swap.

Theakston-- Thanks for the tip. I usually ferment in a bucket with an airlock. Maybe I'll just just drape it with a towel for this batch if the Ringwood really likes lots of oxygen. To oxygenate the pitched wort I usually just take a whisk to the wort until a good froth forms.