Dear friends,
Fellow Champagne fans have no doubt noticed that in the case of a nonvintage
(multi-vintage) wine there's no way to tell, just from looking at the
bottle, what was the base year and what is/are the other year(s) in the
blend. Turns out the reason why there's no way to tell is not just the
secretiveness of Champagne producers - it's the American government.
Peter Liem reports in today's blog post that the Champagne grower-producer
Pascal Doquet "took the time to design a [back] label that could fit all of
the necessary information [pictured in the blog; the label indicated the
bottle contained a 1999-98-96 blend, as well as bottling and disgorgement
dates and dosage, plus don't drink when pregnant and other warnings required
by law], printed it up and sent it off to his American importer. Looks
great, right? Wouldn't you be thrilled if all champagnes had this level of
detail on the label? Well, you're not going to see this label on any of
[Doquet's] bottles, as it was rejected by the American authorities. The
reason is that in the United States, indications of years are not allowed on
non-vintage wines, meaning that telling you exactly what's in the bottle is
somehow less good than not telling you anything at all. Presumably Doquet
will try again, but he'll have to use a system of codes or some other less
transparent (and more complicated) way of conveying this information."
Aren't you glad the TTB and Homeland Security are keeping you safe from
learning too much?
Cheers,
Russ