Liberté, égalité, Prosecco?
A sparkling wine in France is to name itself as a Prosecco Subhash Arora, a good friend of GlassofBubbly.com, is reporting on the recent news that a sparkling wine in France is to name itself as a Prosecco. Subhash is a passionate wine journalist and frequent guest to judge at wine awards internationally. He is president of the Indian Wine Academy website and is also a popular and helpful character to be found on social media – If you are passionate about wine then connect with him via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/subhash.arora.39
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any wine regions with unique names concentrate much effort to protect their ‘name’ from being misused. This includes not only guarding against the usage in the wine sector, but also any other items such as foods products, health and beauty items and so on. Champagne usually gets much of the headlines on the subject of protecting their name as they are usually the most likely name to be misused, though it would appear Prosecco can also hit the headlines. I could not take my eyes off the news report from Vitisphere yesterday when I read that the Luberon Estate owned by the hotel chain ‘Domaine de Fontenille is proud to present Les Impatients, the first Prosecco from Provence, 2019 vintage’. It was apparently a press release from the Luberon estate that also owns 40 hectares of vineyards, according to Vitisphere. Interestingly, the management has given it a serious thought before launching the Prosecco Project based on their sparkling wine with no geographical indication. Joan Poillet,
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sales manager for Fontenille estates, recognises it is illegal to call it Prosecco. He says: “We have no right to call it this legally, we know that. The aim is to conjure up an atmosphere and a spirit.” The production lot is quite small, mostly for consumption by hotel clients. There will be only about 200 cases each of white and rosé each made. ‘The sparkling wine label is as much about drawing on Italian inspiration as diversifying production in a region where sparkling wines are not very common. The Les Impatients range, which is designed as an aperitif and for cocktails, will supply Fontenille Hotels and restaurants as well as other stockists in France and overseas, he says. The hotel group has five properties in Hossegor, Marseilles and Minorca in the South of France. For Joan Poillet, the aim of the range extension is to strengthen the brand and improve price points, particularly for rosé wines. “Over the past 10 to 15 years, Provence rosé has been increasingly exported and promoted. Although consumer perception has evolved, few
