Champagne and Sparkling Wine: The United States and Champagne

The United States is not a signatory to these agreements. Indeed, in the United States “Champagne” is a generic label term for any wine with bubbles. However, an agreement was reached in March 2006 that would allow producers of American sparkling wine using the generic name Champagne to continue to produce the wine, but no new production of such generic wines would be allowed after the agreement was signed.

The use of “Champagne” as a generic label is no different from calling any white swill-in-a-box “Chablis” or any red wine from a jug “Burgundy.” Since the end of Prohibition in 1933 and until 1997 (when for the first time, varietal label wines accounted for a greater proportion of sales than generics), the American wine industry was built on popular, mostly drinkable, inexpensive wines with generic labels. True Chablis, the glorious unoaked Chardonnay made from grapes grown on chalk soils in the coolest climate in Burgundy, is still a tough sell in the American wine market because of the image of Chablis as a cheap jug wine. The image problem for Champagne is even worse.