Moet Hennessy: Putin-approved amendments prohibit sparkling wine from Champagne from being called champagne

Representatives in Russia informed retail chains that amendments to alcohol legislation prohibit them from calling sparkling wine from Champagne champagne. RBC about this Industry representatives told ; The letter itself was posted on Facebook by Olga Sokolova, an employee of the Vinicom network .

Moet Hennessy believes that the bill "excludes the concept of "champagne", allows its use exclusively in relation to "Russian champagne" produced in Russia, and obliges producers of sparkling wines from the French Champagne region to rename their products "sparkling wine"."

In this regard, the company decided to suspend shipments of champagne to Russia.

The letter says that we are talking about amendments adopted on June 23 by senators. Today they were signed by President Vladimir Putin.

The bill itself was introduced in 2017. The authors of the project, which then consisted of 11 pages, wrote in an explanatory note that they were introducing the term “sparkling wine (champagne),” which previously “had no definition.” New items have been added to the project several times, and now there are 76 pages.

So, for example, if previously the law on state regulation of alcohol classified “sparkling wine (champagne)” as alcoholic products, now this part has been prescribed as “sparkling wine, including Russian champagne.”

TASS, retelling the law, writes that it introduces names for grape processing products, definitions of “grape vodka”, “brandy” and “sparkling pearl wines”, as well as conditions for using the name “Cognac of Russia”. The agency does not describe changes in the use of “champagne”.