Miller High Life cans destroyed in Europe over ‘Champagne of Beers’ logo | Hacker News Reader

Miller High Life cans destroyed in Europe over ‘Champagne of Beers’ logo

wsj.com

12 pointsgnicholas47 comments

During a time when we’re watching our use of resources and starting to worry about how much longer we can push our life on the planet, wasting product like this over a stupid word is the dumbest news I’ve read in a while and it’s bad PR for France, at least from my perspective.

It does seem strange that they wouldn't have just shipped it to another jurisdiction where it could have been consumed.

Shipping costs are probably higher than the value of the beer.

Could have just been kept on the originating side of the border? Or would it have to leave Europe? I’m not familiar with the details of these regulations.

Protected declaration of origin is EU wide. The beer would probably have to go back where it came from. I'm assuming it arrived either on a port or an airport, so it would be expensive to ship it back.

They said they destroyed it in an environmentally sensitive way --- could have been a party for customs workers?

Global beer production is something like 180 gigaliters per year.

That silly. There are so many other, better reasons to destroy Miller beer.

name one

I wonder if you could use the word "Champagne" if you were doing it in a way that clearly showed you were not Champagne. For example, a label that says: "It's not Champagne, it's just beer!".

If the restriction is on using the word anywhere on the label, that would not work. But if it's more along the lines of trademark law, where the question is whether there would be confusion in the marketplace, it could be allowed.

I doubt it, plant "milks" face the same issue, they can't display "milk" on the crate, so they do stuff like that: https://www.alpro.com/de/produkte/not-mlk/not-mlk/alpro-not-...

Maybe the "Ch*mpagne of beers"

They probably don't sell that many beers in France anyways, I've never seen that brand here

Is this just in Europe? I thought that recently cooler heads prevailed (for once) in the US regarding plant-based milks

EU, plus probably EEA States and Switzerland.

There are specific protected terms, since they can refer to places to processes. I believe Champagne is both.

In Switzerland it's even stricter, only full-fat milk can be called milk. Skim milk is just called "drink".

We also have plenty of regulations for cheese. Emmentaler in Switzerland (maybe better known as 'swiss cheese') is from actual Emmental, everywhere else it's usually just a cheap copy.

Thankfully these regulations don't seem to hurt much. Here in California, every grocery store has a corner where cow milk and all kind of plant-based milk products are displayed side by side, so it's made extremely obvious that they are comparable beverages. These days the plant-based section may even be larger than the real milk section.

They are comparable in some ways, though I've been surprised at the extent to which different milk substitutes differ from cow milk, and each other. Some are much sweeter, some have little calcium, and some have much less protein. It's nice to have alternatives, but it's important to look at the label to see if you're getting the nutritional aspects of milk that you expect.

We drink milk, almond milk, and oat milk, but I pick the liquid based on what I need for a particular purpose.

I wish it was a separate corner, when the plant based ‘yogurts’ and ‘cheeses’ are right next to the real stuff and I’ve accidentally bought the plant based kind. Makes you wonder why these products can’t just come up with their own name of what they are if they’re so convincing. I’m still waiting for ribeye imitation tofu.

Oatmilk is extremely popular here and everyone refers to it as oatmilk. I don't understand why you need a different name for it, as long as it is clearly qualified. So you have the weird situation where everyone says "oatmilk", and the package for legal reasons needs to be labelled "oat drink".

Lots of opaque, white fluids have traditionally been called "milk"...

Milks been less of an issue but cheese, yogurt and other products have plant in tiny font and you don’t often realize until you get home.

> Makes you wonder why these products can’t just come up with their own name of what they are if they’re so convincing

Because people already buy the original things en masse, so using that name is a good way to get them interested in the first place. \

Why use "White Colored Oat Beverage" when "Oat Milk" is an option.

I once bought a bunch of cheeses to make lasagna. When I was tasting them as I made the lasagna, I noticed that the ricotta tasted like chalk. Inspected the container, and it happened to actually be some tofu bullshit, not ricotta cheese, except you wouldn't know unless you did a fucking forensic investigation of this particular "ricotta cheese" container that was with all the other ricotta cheeses. So disgusting that it ruined the entire $40(ish?) lasagna. Never again. Pretty sure I shitlisted that whole store for tricking their customers like that.

It makes no claims of being champagne, it just compares itself to champagne metaphorically like something calling itself “the cream of the crop”.

"The Rolls Royce/Prada/... of beers"

Champagne is a brand for sparkling wine. People pay a premium (justified or not) for it.

My examples are even more unrelated than the beer, still the companies would likely defend their brand.

Miller is trying to pull itself up with the brand Champagne and is pulling the brand down. (If Miller is champagne of beers, what does it say about champagne as a sparkling wine)

> Miller is trying to pull itself up with the brand Champagne and is pulling the brand down.

yes, this is how some europeans see it. imo it’s absurd.

> Miller High Life has proudly worn the nickname ‘The Champagne of Beers’ for almost 120 years

seems to me european laws have become more ridiculous as time goes by. and the more ridiculous the more staunch defendants somehow.

Why do you think so? As European I don't understand why you think that it is stupid, but also coming from a place that has interest in keeping that kind of law active (I am from Napoli, Italy), I see the usefulness of avoiding companies not being based in Emilia doing a cheese that is called Parmigiano, or not based in Naples doing Bufala, or Pachino..

Consider that each naming is often backed by a consortium, not a single company, and represent the whole process from selection of ingredients to the manufacturing, as a consumer I kinda know what to expect based on the naming

I can only see positively that not anyone from China or US can just export something and claim to be something else and probably make a Parmigiano with rat poison

Interesting to see what happens in the case (no pun intended) of Champagne regarding climate change.

Due to global warming, there are indications that ideal growing conditions are moving westwards towards the South of England. Established houses like Tattinger have been buying up vineyards in Kent.

I wonder what would happen to that protected name if parts of their raw material had no connection to that region of France.

> Why do you think so?

lack of competition. protectionism. etc

> I see the usefulness of avoiding companies not being based in Emilia doing a cheese that is called Parmigiano, or not based in Naples doing Bufala, or Pachino..

I should be able to create all of those anywhere on the planet. there's nothing special about Naples or Emilia, no matter how much we wish it to be true.

> I can only see positively that not anyone from China or US can just export something and claim to be something else and probably make a Parmigiano with rat poison

zero probability of this happening, but the vein of this idea is actually quite common in Europe when it comes to discussing about the US and China.

Meh I think lack of competition and protectionism is a good thing, there are a lot of industrial mozzarella etc that compete and not protect and they are usually cheap ingredient, cheap labour and no taste, and they all go down, probably you want competition, then buy the alcoholic beverages not being "Champagne", when I go to get something that is a DOC/DOP mark, I expect not competition but quality, yeah you can do mozzarella wherever you want, just don't call it Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP? That doesn't disallow you to produce mozzarella wherever you want, but just limits you on the kind of mark you can use on it?

Odd that they still have that claim on their cans. I last had a High Life over 25 years ago, and the aftertaste is still in my mouth.

You'd think a company of that size would have lawyers who know about protected regional product names. It's EU thing and you might disagree with it, but you have to comply with laws if you want to do business.

An article on the subject from NPR[1] said:

> Molson Coors Beverage Co., which owns the Miller High Life brand, does not currently export it to the EU, and Belgian customs declined to say who had ordered the beers.

Not sure who ships in 2,352 cans without realizing it could be an issue at the border, but maybe a fan of Do the Right Thing? [2]

[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/04/22/1171460421/miller-beer-champa...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkrPHv5qOCc

More likely a fan of Smokey and the Bandit who has ever so sligtly better taste in beer.

Cost of 2000 cans << value of publicity

Importing Miller beer into Germany raises questions anyway, but it's a good thing that the guy didn't try to import Coors. Germany would have had real problems with their slogan, put in place by Joseph Coors, of "Arbeit macht frei".

Is this an advertising stunt

If this stunt made me realize anything is that this beer brand belongs in the trash

As an American and long time European resident, I'm glad that Europe is pushing out shitty American beer whatever the reason.

https://archive.is/DTYtb

(This refers to https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2023/04/21/champagne-mil..., which was another submission https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35664261 that we merged into this one.)

We are officially in the “good times” if this is the type of article the news is putting out. What a non issue.

Ah yes I forgot that’s how things work- if anyone writes a report on something trivial, all non-trivial issues cease to be.

Really we should be thanking journalists, we wouldn’t have world peace if they didn’t write articles like this.

>> Kristen Bell cracks open a can of Miller High Life, pauses, and then exclaims, "Wait a minute! THIS is the Bad Place!"

TL;DR

"French protections prohibit the use of ‘Champagne’ on drinks made outside of the region"

"More than 2,300 cans of Miller High Life were dumped and destroyed in Europe this week for bearing the logo “the Champagne of Beers.”"

I wish the terms "Free Software" and "Open Source" were legally protected to the same extent that "Champagne" is.

Ah yes, you can only call it “Open Source” if the source code is certified by the D.O.P. as written in Manila. All other source may go by names such as “Permissive Source” or “Unclosed Source”.

“Free Software” is prohibited; a small donut shop it Tennessee aggressively defends its trademark on the word “Free”, as applied to coffee (which is widely understood to be the primary ingredient in Software).

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