Is World Big Enough for 2 Champagnes?

CHAMPAGNE, Switzerland —  It’s hard to beat the name recognition of this quiet hamlet in the lee of the Jura Mountains, where for centuries farmers have tended vines of Pinot Noir and other varieties of grape that are then crushed and turned into wine.

For who hasn’t heard of vin de Champagne--wine from Champagne? The pale and bubbly beverage is virtually synonymous with elegance and the good life the world over.

The only problem is, this isn’t the same Champagne, or the same wine.

More than 1,000 years old, this Swiss village of 700 inhabitants is locked in an unequal battle with France and the rich and powerful French industry that makes the other sort of Champagne--the famous stuff--over the right of vintners here to keep stating the obvious: that the fermented, non-fizzy stuff squeezed from their grapes also is “wine from Champagne.”

The dispute has gotten some people’s patriotic hackles up.

“People here are going to think something’s been stolen from us if the only time we can use our village’s name is in our postal address,” complained Albert Banderet, the mayor and a vineyard owner.

Underpinning this mouse-that-roared tale is a simple business truth: Never before in the increasingly globalized commerce of food and drink has protecting brand names and places of origin been so important.

As early as 1927, the French began building a rigid labeling system that, for example, insists that wine sold as “Bordeaux” actually comes from the Bordeaux area. And in 1974, the French signed a trade agreement with Switzerland that specifies the names each country wants to protect as its own.

Chagrined Swiss officials now admit “Champagne” was listed as exclusive French property. This little municipality--whose name, like the Champagne region across the border in France, comes from the Latin word for fields--somehow fell through the cracks.

Indeed, a lot of other European countries, including Switzerland, were late to get involved in this game--as evidenced by the fact that most of the “Swiss” cheese sold in the delis of the United States is no more Swiss than a can of Cheez Whiz.

With sales of imported foods in the United States, the 15-nation European Union and Japan now worth well above $115 billion a year combined, grabbing consumers’ attention and loyalty is absolutely vital.

“Today everyone is aware of the importance of brands in international trade,” said David Best, a government spokesman in Bern, the Swiss capital.

As long as anyone can remember, people have been growing grapes in this French-speaking area of western Switzerland to take advantage of the temperate climate 1,500 feet above sea level. The deep purple fruit for this year’s vintage was harvested late last month.

If 1998 is a typical year, this village, with 65 acres of vineyards, will produce about 50,000 bottles of red, white and rose, none of it with a claim to greatness--a typical bottle of red sells for $7.50--and none of it sparkling.

Meanwhile, in the northeastern French region called Champagne, they moved 260 million bottles of the bubbly stuff to customers last year, some for more than $300 a bottle retail, and grossed $2.8 billion.

How long this Swiss village can hold out against such a commercial juggernaut is a frequent topic when people here gather at the cafe of the local hotel (named the Grape) for a glass and a bit of company. This summer, in a letter that Mayor Banderet indignantly rejects as talk of capitulation, an official of the Vaud canton, or state, suggested villagers start thinking about a “fallback position.”

“This whole thing is ridiculous,” said Stephane Chevailler, a 22-year-old graduate of a winemaking course, as he savored a glass of his father’s peppery-scented red with a visitor. “This place has been called Champagne for 1,000 years. And our wine is completely different--it’s still, not bubbly.”

Too bad, comes the retort from France; you shouldn’t have signed that trade deal back in ’74.

Today the village’s use of its name is back on the table in a different forum, as the Swiss and the European Union--to which France belongs but Switzerland does not--negotiate a comprehensive economic accord.

“We’re not asking that the name ‘Champagne’ be erased from the map of Switzerland,” explained Andre Inders, general director of the Interprofessional Committee of the Wines of Champagne, the French industry association. “What we’re asking is that the name ‘Champagne’ no longer be mentioned on bottles of wine that don’t come from Champagne.”

In their crusade to protect a name they consider valuable commercial property, the French have proved quite ready to play hardball. When a lot of 3,000 bottles of Swiss Champagne rose made its way into French chain stores over the Christmas holidays last year, many were seized by the police squad in charge of stamping out fraud. From the French point of view, the product was no less bogus than a counterfeit Rolex. It was also dangerous competition.

“If you line up 25 different bottles of wine that have nothing special about them, the one whose label mentions ‘Champagne’ will be preferred, because it refers to the famous wine produced exclusively in the Champagne region [of France],” Nicolas de Saussure, in charge of promoting French wine in Switzerland, told Agence France-Presse early this year.

According to the stocky, good-humored Banderet, the French also have gone to court to block an entrepreneur here from producing sparkling wine he wanted to call “Champagne,” forcing him to drop the idea.

In 1991, a local bakery employing 60 people that makes a line of cocktail crackers and snacks called “From Champagne” was made to specify on its boxes that the contents came from “one of Switzerland’s charming villages.” The French also are unhappy about 50 tons of soft cheese produced here each year that carry the village’s name.

The wrangle with the French both amuses and irks Banderet, 49, whose family has farmed these gentle slopes for so long that an ancestor was Champagne’s mayor in 1702. Historical documents refer to the village as early as 888.

“You know, I think we were living in this village before the French were in that region of theirs,” Banderet said. “They say they want to build a Europe that respects local and regional identities. Well, what about ours?”