The Comité Champagne asked for the destruction of a shipment of 2,352 cans on the grounds that the century-old motto used by the American brewery infringes the protected designation of origin "Champagne." The consignment was intercepted in the Belgian port of Antwerp in early February....
It's suddenly a problem because normally Miller is not exported to the EU, but somebody in Germany ordered this shipment. Who knows why? The unnamed buyer "was informed and did not contest the decision" to destroy the canned beer.
The slogan is 120 years old. Originally it was "The Champagne of Bottle Beers."
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Everything is changing because of the stupidity of people. People are too stupid to get "of beers." People are too stupid for there to be a "reasonable person" legal standard. (Yesterday's SCOTUS post.)
In college we always just called it High Life. We knew it was better than Natty or the Beast, but champagne it wasn't.
A crisis narrowly averted.
Puffery is accepted in advertising even in the EU because they are specifically not factual claims. This particular slogan is a simile. Again not a factual claim. This is very strange story and not at all like the prior battles over using “cheddar” or “champagne” or “Parma ham” and it really seems like something Miller could have won on appeal before.
What has changed?
Have you ever dranken Frog Water? It's the Miller High Life of Champagnes. Very affordable. Try it. It'll setcha free.
The private purchase of a couple hundred cases is a problem? This is what will really stop one-world government—the harmonization of laws will be either unacceptable to local populations or ruinous to international trade.
just spell it American way >> champain
I can't find a good reference, but there's a meme mocking the PDO for champagne that goes "It's only an X if it comes from the X region of France; otherwise, it's just Y," where the original has X = champagne and Y = sparkling wine (or prosecco or whatever). It's not surprising to see the French go after this, even if no one would actually mistake the beer for champagne, since being able to do this sort of thing was the whole point of getting a PDO. And associating beer with champagne potentially dilutes the brand. Although that's also why there's a meme making fun of them for it.
Miller is a training beer, suitable for introducing beer to novices so they can get used to the taste before moving on to real beers. California Rolls provide a similar service for sushi.
I wonder how Miller Lite sales are doing.
For those of us who don't have a high regard for the way-overpriced taste of bubbles, our slogan is "Champagne - the Miller Beer of wines!"
We knew it was better than Natty or the Beast, but champagne it wasn't.
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am getting all fratty now!!
i'd put pickled jalempeno in my
Technically, I don't think you are allowed to call Miller "beer" in Germany.
…but somebody in Germany ordered this shipment. Who knows why?
Let me put on my tinfoil hat here…
The introduction of a precedent the importance of which may not be apparent to us now… sovereignty minded Americans.
What makes no sense is importing into countries with the best beer in the world American dishwater with bubbles.
Sheriff Buford T. Justice won this round.
Sheriff Buford T. Justice won this round.
tommyesq said...
Technically, I don't think you are allowed to call Miller "beer" in Germany.
thread winner
Reinheitsgebot, which permits only water, hops, and malt
Imagine being in Germany and drinking Miller High Life.
Kind of off subject: Miller is popular in Scotland: you'll see a tap in most pubs, at least around Inverness.
I attribute this to the influx of American oil workers in bygone decades, and the fact that Scottish beer is not particularly good ("strong ale" in strong, but tasteless).
I think it is brewed there under license, not imported.
In the 70s there was something called Champale…try that maybe
Grape laws are strict- no flexibility. That’s how you end up with Super Tuscans- very expensive and high quality table wine…
Fine, it's the sparkling wine of beers.
Miller should have put a tranny on the beer cans. Comité and EU probably would have welcomed it with open arms.
Did I see an issue of Playboy magazine on the coffee table in that commercial?
Swiller High Life was often our best choice in college. Imports were few, and dear, and it was better than Schitz or Buttwiper.
Wiedemann's was good for washing socks.
Well . . . if the Belganiacs had tossed the stuff into the sewer on the theory that the term, “beer”, had been misappropriated, that might have made sense. This is silly, though I enjoyed visiting (and drinking excellent beer) their country
Miller is my sentimental favorite of the domestic adjuncts. For some reason, these days it makes me feel a bit . . .I don't know, it doesn't agree with me for some reason.
Anyone who would willingly destroy beer is not a person worth considering.
Hmmmm. The Belgians own Busch/Bud and more. They order MHL DESTROYED (!).
Conspiracy time!!!!!!
The French can get f@*cked
Europeans take their PDO very seriously.
Some countries are very picky about how beer is made, what ingredients and how packaged.
I'm surprised that they let it even be "beer"
Puerto Rico used to require beer to be sold in 10oz bottles and cans. Justified on the grounds of reducing drinking doncha know.
Not just 10oz cans but skinny 10oz cans that for machinery reasons were just too difficult to make. You can run skinny cans or fat cans but it is very expensive to switch.
Bottles are less expensive to swotch but still cost.
It worked for a long time. Now everyone makes 10oz skinny cans.
John Henry
I cannot imagine why anyone in the EU would import Miller.
How is American beer like making love in a canoe? Its f****** close to water.
So put a sticker reading "The sparkling beverage of bottled beer" over the offending words, and get on with one's life.
Back in the 50s, Miller was considered a "Ladies Beer". Defined as being a lighter beer than the norm.
A very bad, awful month for the large beer companies. Long live craft breweries.
The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice, for all that Freedom Fries crap. Les Francais n'oblient jamais.
Miller is a training beer, suitable for introducing beer to novices so they can get used to the taste before moving on to real beers. California Rolls provide a similar service for sushi.
Real beers are ales, porters or stouts, etc. Not lagers, which are little more than flavored dishwater. Miller ingredients include corn syrup to feed the yeast rather than more grain. They also use hop extract, rather than more hops. Real beer is fermented at or near room temperature, not at 40F.
What next, "Champale" malt liquor?
Even the Champale ads over the years tout the likelihood of confusion.
For example: "Champale is unfair to Champagne." "The Big Mix Up."
And my personal favorite: "Hi Diane, I've got a drink that'll make your mouth think it's Saturday night."
This reminded me of what my almost-teetotaler father said after taking sip of some low-rent bubbly served on an airline flight way way back in the day ... "tastes like stale beer".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vuOnVNiYtg
Everyone knows that Champagne pairs best with Red Bull.
Christopher Walken certainly thought so.
The French are mostly arrogant pricks.
This is yet another example why...
This is true: “Reinheitsgebot, which permits only water, hops, and malt.” An example of great lawmaking.
This is close: “Imagine being in Germany and drinking Miller High Life.”
However in the early twenty-tens Budweiser longnecks were enjoying a boom in the London bar scene and out to the Cotswolds. Ladies liked it for being light and IMO dudes drank it to get close to the ladies. One British buddy loved it and absolutely hated my preference, Newcastle.
I never liked champagne. Still don't. So calling something the "Champagne of..." is not a compliment in my way of thinking.
I would contend that the true home of the best beer in the world is Czech Republic not Deutschland.
Trademark protection generally requires aggressive enforcement or it is lost. There was a case we studied in law school in which a court (I believe it was a 3 judge panel of the USDC) held that a retailer could advertise its (non-Singer brand) sewing machines as "singers" because the name had become synonymous with the machine--like "Kleenex" or "Scotch Tape." So the Champagne region, or Kleenex, must be aggressive about protecting the name.
I believe that "Bourbon" whiskeys do the same.
Blame the lawyers.
I read a fascinating John McPhee piece (the adjective is redundant, of course) about the massive chalk formation under Champagne which apparently accounts for the bubbly wine. The chalk formation runs across the Channel to form the White Cliffs of Dover, and there are apparently wine growing regions in southern England which produce excellent bubbly, which they are not allowed to call Champagne.
I read the piece a long time ago and this is all from memory. So don't quote me.
Mike of Snoqualmie, not all lagers are flavorless. American Adjunct Lagers, like most beers the average American can name, are indeed crap, for all the reasons you mamed. But German Schwarzbiers are very tasty lagers. And the best batch of beer I ever brewed was my one lager, fermented for weeks in my 40 degree Michigan basement. It was a doppelbock, extremely clean and malty and delicious.
Real beers are ales, porters or stouts, etc. Not lagers, which are little more than flavored dishwater. Miller ingredients include corn syrup to feed the yeast rather than more grain. They also use hop extract, rather than more hops. Real beer is fermented at or near room temperature, not at 40F.
In medical school, I made my own beer. It tasted a lot like Heineken's. We would have bottle washing parties when it was ready. There would be a lot left because it had to age after bottling. We drank the month old beer.
"Long live craft breweries."
Hear, hear. But too many craft breweries need rebranding and revised nomenclature. Tactical Nuclear Penguin, Even More Jesus, Barbarian Streisand, Pathological Lager -- these are brew names that issue forth from adolescent minds, briefly funny but tedious and insipid 24 hours later.
And right on cue, the beer snobs come out.
If EU trademark/ip laws are similar to us they have no choice in this. If they don't object to even petty encroachment like this, they will lose the exclusive right to the name.
Miller would be able to sell HighLife champagne.
Not the champagne of beer but actual beer called champagne
John Henry
They were just jealous of the attention Kid Rock got for destroying beer, but as Jurgen dresses as a woman at the disco they had to destroy Miller not Bud Light.
Jean Shepherd in the early 60s had a memorable champagne of bottled beer tag on the miller ads, which ought to grandfather it in.
Joe Smith: "The French are mostly arrogant pricks.
This is yet another example why..."
In this case I understand what the French are doing. It took a very long time for the wine appellation system to be finalized and was intended to protect specific viticultural areas and their trademark values. For the Champagne region, their battles to protect the naming rights from their region goes back to the 1800's and was really cranked up prior to WW2.
The French, under intense economic pressure from increasingly outstanding wines and sparkling white wines from across the globe, know that the name alone sets them apart as there are in fact quality competitors everywhere. So they are being even more overprotective than usual.
And that's all in addition to the French being, well, French.
Looks like a Miller publicity stunt to me.
Blogger Joe Smith said..The French are mostly arrogant pricks. This is yet another example why...
Fuck those cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
Reinheitsgebot, which permits only water, hops, and malt
Plus yeast. No yeast, no alcohol, no beer.
European "maturity" on display.
boatbuilder speaks true about brew : As I read the piece a long time ago and this is all from memory. So don't quote me.
As for Miller's competitor, 2 Bud execs have been "put on leave" re the Dylan blowback:
“We have made some adjustments to streamline the structure of our marketing function to reduce layers so that our most senior marketers are more closely connected to every aspect of our brands’ activities,” Anheuser-Busch said in a statement.
A statement that challenges anything ChatGPT could do.
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