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  • Champagne battle

    BBC, News, BBC News, news online, world, uk, international, foreign, british, online, service


    When I first emigrated to Switzerland, in 1963, I lived in a village called Fiez, which was next to Champagne, and drank many litres of their Champagne wine, a still white from the Chasselas grape. It actually wasn't a brilliant brew, but made a pleasant summer apéritif.

    The absolute daft thing about this battle over the name is that there is an industrial bakery there that has been making flaky bread sticks (excellent with the apéritif) since time immemorial and they have called them Flûtes de Champagne for over a century. The word flûte, in French, meaning, of course, flute, has been used since 1806 for flute-shaped bread, so there is plenty of precedence.

    Up to fairly recently, the traditional glass for the French sparkling Champagne wine has been the 'coupe', a fairly flat open glass, which lost all bouquet. About 40 years ago, the better champagne-growers launched a campaign to introduce a better shaped glass for their brew and they designed a tall, tulip-shaped glass, which certainly improved the experience of any sparkling wine. What did call this glass? Why, a flûte, of course. So, with this neologism, Flûte de Champagne may mean a glass of wine or a bread stick. The bakery has been struggling to keep its ancient name of their famous product alive against the steam-rolling French, as well as their wine, which has long pre-dated the fizzy stuff from France, and it is an international issue, the stuff wars are started for.

    This may seem a storm in a teacup, but it is more a wind in a wineglass!

    Flûte, alors!
    Brian (the devil incarnate)
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