MILANO – War of bubbles between Russia and France. Vladimir Putin inaugurates the sovereignty of the most traditional – and prestigious – wine for toasts and declares war on French champagne with the passing of a law that penalizes the status symbol, in terms of terminology, of the most famous drink in the world. The Russian president opened the hostilities with the signing of a law according to which the champagne exported to the Federation can no longer be called that but will have to be content with the much more modest denomination of “sparkling wine”.
The classic brand of French bubbles will instead be reserved for those produced in Russia. But to spoil the party, and to deprive oligarchs and various rich people of the flute prince of good nights and solemn ceremonies, the response of the French arrived on time, indignant, they immediately decreed the stop to exports to Russia of Moet & Chandon, Veuve Cliquot and Dom Perignon.
The French luxury giant LVMH is not there and has made it known clearly. The reaction of the Russian branch of Moet-Hennessy, a company that is part of the Wines & Spirits segment of LVMH, was immediate and took the form of a letter whose contents were disclosed by the Russian business newspaper Knowledge: the decision to stop, albeit temporarily, the export of champagne is taken. Waiting to find a solution, but certainly not to the downside.
There is no mention of changing the name of champagne into sparkling wine. Also because, in addition to the question of principle, there would be a bureaucratic process that is anything but simple and that would require, among other things, the recertification of the drinks and a new labeling. On the other hand, the term champagne, in addition to being an identity brand for the French, is a protected designation of origin that refers to the origin from a very specific place of origin, the champagne region, in fact, in France. And although since the Soviet Union the term champagne translated into Cyrillic has been used for the distribution of a fizzy alcohol produced in just three weeks in local distilleries, now the decision sounds like a provocation.
Leonid Rafailov, general manager of Ast company, one of the leading distributors of wines and spirits in Russia, in a comment to Knowledge he said he hoped the French would agree to call their champagne sparkling. But there are also those who, like Leonid Popovich, president of the Russian winegrowers’ union, minimize. In a statement released to Sputnik, he said that of about twenty champagne importers in Russia, only Moet-Hennessy expressed his “indignation” at the new law. Not only that, he also spoke of “blackmail” by the French. Popovich, and another connoisseur of this sector such as Vadim Drobiz, estimate that the market share held by the French brand is only 2% of the total imports of bubbles in Russia. Conclusion, “there will be no coups d’etat or serial suicides among the Russian elites simply because they will no longer be able to stock up on Moet”.
Anna Chernyshova, a consultant in the wine market and specialized in creating wineries with exceptional bottles for wealthy customers, does not think the same way. Alla France Press confessed: “My phone doesn’t stop ringing, my clients try to figure out what they can do.”
In short, the war of bubbles has just begun and Made in Italy could benefit from it: according to Coldiretti estimates, the first quarter of 2021 marked a record increase of 37% in exports of Italian sparkling wine to Russia compared to the same period last year. . Last year 25 million bottles of sparkling wine were uncorked in Putin’s country, where Prosecco and Asti are particularly popular.
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