[addcommitpush]

Disclaimer: I'm French

I never understood why the "Champagne" issue was so obviously silly to Americans.

Champagne is an actual place, that's where the name of the wine made there comes from.

Could you name something "Napa Valley wine" if it's not from Napa Valley?

[ben_w]

Style vs. origin.

A randomly selected hamburger, frankfurter, or wiener, probably isn't made in Hamburg, Frankfurt, or Vienna.

And sometimes it can get even weirder: Stilton cheese is named after where it was historically sold, but it's made elsewhere and you're not allowed to call a cheese "stilton" if you actually make it in Stilton. (Edit: I originally got Stilton and Cheddar mixed up).

As I'm a British national, I don't know if this is the full reason, or if this is in combination with the natural human tendency to care more about nearby things and that the Atlantic is so big that all of the USA is closer to one of the places called "Champagne" within the USA than to the original in France.

[steveklabnik]

Language is interesting.

There is a kind of onion called a "Vidalia onion," grown in the town of Vidalia, Georgia. They're a sweeter onion, which is unusual, which is why it grew into a brand.

However, because of this, a lot of people's first exposure with a sweet onion is a Vidalia. But not all sweet onions are Vidalia onions. Yet sometimes people still use "Vidalia" to mean "sweet onion" in a generic sense.

I suspect it's very similar, honestly: I don't think your average American knows that Champagne is a place. Their only exposure to the word is via that style of wine. And so they associate it with the style rather than the brand/region.

(Vidalia onions are also protected legally in the same way that Champagne is; a lot of people in this thread saying that that's just some silly French thing don't realize how common this is. In the onions' case, this has been true since 1989.)

[sgerenser]

Vidalia onions reminds me of this HN classic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728132

[profquail]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synecdoche

[gumby]

And “cheddar cheese” from Wisconsin never gets closer than a few thousand miles from Cheddar Gorge.

[tialaramex]

Cheddar isn't a Protected Designation. So, if you want to make Cheddar in Swansea? No problem. Edinburgh? No problem. Dublin? Pretoria? Atlanta? Christchurch? All fine.

"West Country Farmhouse Cheddar" is protected, but that's quite a mouthful so few people care, and that still only requires you made it in roughly the correct way (you need to use local milk) and in roughly the correct part of the UK (maybe an hour or two drive from Cheddar).

[gumby]

Perspective: live in the USA, from Australia (where the “locale” mentality is the same as USA), lived for years in France. So I understand both sides.

The simple explanation is that nobody in the US really cares about the point of origin — even wine labels are considered more a brand than a location. There is no sense that « terroir » might have any consequence.

Sometimes you encounter food labeled with the state where it was grown or produced — that’s mainly a “buy local” claim, nothing more.

[saagarjha]

It’s mostly genericized at this point. You can get a Philly cheesesteak all over the US, for example. Maybe it’s not as authentic as something from Pennsylvania but being pedantic about it is a little snobby.

[makeitdouble]

Philly cheesesteak has never been about Philly grown meat and Philly grown cheese though. French also won't be fighting to have "Paris-Brest" region protected for instance.

Champagne is not about a recipe or concept, the grapes are grown and made to wine in the actual place.

[SamReidHughes]

Philly cheesesteak sellers in other locations often advertise they use real Amoroso rolls shipped from Philadelphia.

[Brybry]

That only matters legally.

In actual language usage, in the US, many people use champagne to mean any white sparkling wine (possibly any sparkling wine).

In the southern US 'coke' can be used to mean soda. Any soda. Even Pepsi. It doesn't matter that Coca-Cola has the trademark for Coke or that a Pepsi isn't a Coke.

[1000100_1000101]

> In the southern US 'coke' can be used to mean soda. Any soda. Even Pepsi. It doesn't matter that Coca-Cola has the trademark for Coke or that a Pepsi isn't a Coke.

Not just soda. My parents moved to Texas, I visited a bit, and had people ask me if this Coke thing was true. I had no idea... we generally didn't eat out, so I didn't hear what the locals did.

When I was back for Christmas, we were at a restaurant, and I heard the waiter as the table beside ours asking about drinks, so I listened...

Customer: "Can I get a Coke?" Waiter: "What kind of Coke?" (as this point I'm thinking they want clarity on Regular, Diet, Cherry, etc...) Customer: "A lemonade".

That was just weird to me. A Coke is literally ANY drink in Texas.

[makeitdouble]

I agree people should be allowed to colloquially call it whatever they want. Nobody will be there to stop parents from call their kids' PS5 a nintendo or calling mega blocks legos.

The rules are different for official product names though. I think "sparking wine" is explicit enough for any of these drinks to not have to strip the Champagne region of its name.

[jasode]

>The rules are different for official product names though.

Your argument about "official product names" seems inconsistently applied.

In your first paragraph, Nintendo® and Lego® are registered trademarks with the government and therefore, "official product names":

>I agree people should be allowed to colloquially call it whatever they want. Nobody will be there to stop parents from call their kids' PS5 a nintendo or calling mega blocks legos.

If people can colloquially re-use "Nintendo" to label any game console from Sony/Microsoft/Sega, why is colloquially using "champagne" to describe sparkling wine that's not from France a different scenario?

EDIT to reply: >The point makeitdouble is making is that it’s fine for people to use the term generically, but products shouldn’t use the name generically.[...], but Sony can’t call their next console a “Nintendo”.

The isolated subthread with grandparents (saagarjha, Brybry) that makeitdouble and you are replying in is talking about language usage and not corporations' product branding:

- saagarjha --> "It’s mostly genericized at this point." : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38979031

- Brybry --> "That only matters legally. In actual language usage, [...]" : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38979180

Brybry is actually already agreeing with your Sony example and that comment gets downvoted? Both saagarjha and Brybry have stated correct facts about how language is used in the wild so what exactly are people downvoting? I'm truly confused.

Again, the context of the subthread is language usage and not about breaking France & EU legal rules around "Champagne".

[JimDabell]

The point makeitdouble is making is that it’s fine for people to use the term generically, but products shouldn’t use the name generically. So a parent might call a PS5 a “Nintendo”, but Sony can’t call their next console a “Nintendo”. The same applies to champagne. People can call sparkling white wine “champagne”, but companies producing sparkling white wine should be able to call their products “champagne” unless it is actually from Champagne.

[p4bl0]

> That only matters legally.

No, the location does affect the taste of the wine (soil composition, sun exposure, type of vines, local traditions in how things are done…).

[Brybry]

While that's true it won't change the language usage outside of legally bound commercial labeling.

Dictionaries aren't static and have to be updated constantly.

[bootsmann]

The location does impact the taste of the wine (soil sun etc.) this doesn’t apply to the Philly cheesesteak does it?

[riwsky]

Pizza, though, is only available in NY and CT

[jjgreen]

Invented by the English of course https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-399630...

[bee_rider]

We generally mock wine-snobbery. There’s some element of stereotyping French things as pretentious. But mostly it is because that’s the brand of wine that is known by everybody to be fancy. (Hey, stereotyping is bad, but on the other hand we don’t mistake any British food for fancy, so at least there’s some begrudging respect built into the stereotype).

So really, congrats to Champagne for making a brand so well known that Wayne’s World can make fun of it and be sure that basically the whole audience will get the joke. I mean that sincerely.

You have to know a little bit about wine to know about Napa Valley. I think “it’s from NaPa Valllleeyyy” in a sort of silly voice is something that somebody might say. It just doesn’t have the reach.

I would think of this as not really making fun of Champagne. We’re making fun of being the kind of person that cares about Champagne.

[aisuaaaujudjdn]

The British food thing is I think less about respect or fanciness and more familiarity. American staples tend to have similar ratios of various nutrient groups, often without even as much as a substitute. American "home-style" cooking is almost identical in a lot of respects, if we ignore regional variations in both countries.

So I think its less that we think French cuisine is fancy or British food is bad, and more that we don't even really think about British food because a British Christmas dinner is basically the same as an American one (and I've got no clue what a French person would eat for Christmas dinner, so it is exotic and expensive sounding in that respect).

Of course all of this mostly applies to everyone in any anglosphere country. I don't think an Australian would be any more uncomfortable eating a home cooked American meal than an American would be eating a British one.

[leejoramo]

I think the issue with Champagne is that in the USA we used the word as a generic term for sparkling wine for MANY decades before it became a Designated Appellation. Bottles were sold here using the word champagne only to indicate it was sparkling wine.

[sharlos201068]

In English, champagne isn't wine from a specific location, it's a specific type of wine. People aren't going to call red wine grown from the place champagne.

It's like saying you can't call them brazil nuts unless they were grown in Brazil.

[mp05]

> People aren't going to call red wine grown from the place champagne.

Correct, because red wines produced in Champagne are called something else.

To get to your point though, red wines from Bourgogne are most certainly referred to as "burgundy" and depending on whom you ask, it's always pinot noir (but some will argue Gamay is included). I've noticed that many chefs refer to any good Pinot as a burgundy when dunking it in their stews, and while that's probably okay most of the time when cooking, that generalization is discarding more than just a little nuance for drinkin' wine. A pinot noir grape grown in Oregon can be vastly different than one from France and I will usual skip on the former.

> It's like saying you can't call them brazil nuts unless they were grown in Brazil.

You're attempting to compare an entire culture, craft, and industry of wine to nuts that fall off trees. With things like wine, cheese, and cured meats, there are certainly regional characteristics and traditional techniques that make a product distinct. This designation is to protect consumers and businesses and hurts no one except imposters?

Since that's all too high brow, another more pertinent example may be how everyone from Kentucky knows the limestone in the water makes its whiskey the best in the would. While the US has some laws defining qualities of whiskey, it unfortunately doesn't lay down rules on "terroir". Corn mash isn't quite as expressive as wine grapes, so I can understand the skepticism but many folks swear that the old barns where bourbon whiskey is aged add their own touch.... not so sure about that one.

https://blog.heavenhilldistillery.com/detail.php?post_name=e... https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/5.143

[forinti]

Fun fact: in Brazil they are called Pará nuts. Pará is a state, but the largest producer is the Amapá state.

[alganet]

Amapá used to be part of Pará though.

[yau8edq12i]

Brazil nuts is the actual name of the species of plant. Champagne isn't the name of the grape.

[NikkiA]

Try getting americans to stop calling their "cheese" cheddar though.

Which showcases the real issue - it's ok when americans approriate non-american names for things, but not when others do it.

[zilti]

And yet France managed to prohibit the Swiss town of Champagne from printing its town name on its wine

[math_dandy]

For us anglos, shampane is just the generic term for bubbly wine. They find the existence of actual laws banning this standard usage silly.

“No one’s gonna tell me that the 1.5 litre bottle of Baby Duck that I drink with my Pizza Hut delivery while watching infomercials isn’t shampane!”

[ahoka]

Climate change will make this a non issue soon, don’t worry.

[justsomehnguy]

> Champagne is an actual plac

And this where your ununderstanding starts. It is a place name for you. For literally billions of people it's some word describing a type alc. drink first.

[usea]

Yes, you can generally name things whatever you want. Champagne is a notable exception. The absurdity of this exception is not lost on people.

[jltsiren]

It's quite common in the EU. Names such as cognac, port, and parmesan are protected, and you can only use them for products made using the traditional process in the traditional region.

[steveklabnik]

It's also not completely uncommon in the US either, see my other comment above.

[yau8edq12i]

Really? I can name my OS windows and my car Ferrari?

There's no reason that only corporations should get to enjoy trademark protection.