Don Giovanni in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. An early case of product placement: Marzemino is a red wine from the Trentino region, back then part of Austria-Hungary.

That is, in search of the Oracle of the Big Bottle.

Don Giovanni in Mozart’s Don Giovanni: “Here is to women, here is to wine, support and glory of mankind”. Apart from the wine issue, the lot only seems worried, as Pantagruel’s friend friar (!) John puts it, “to die with their cods overgorged”.

Joseph Roth, Die Legende vom Heiligen Trinker, Amsterdam 1939.

Patrick Macnee as John Steed in a blind tasting contest in: The Avengers, Dial a Deadly Number (1965). Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) was much impressed.

For you, I pour a Tokaj wine: Mephisto in Goethe‘s Faust, location: Auerbach’s Keller. For centuries, Tokaj was the wine of kings (and queens, and tsars, and emperors), if not the king of wines. Today, the Tokaj region is located for its most part in Hungary, for a small part in Slovakia. The white dessert wine made of moulded resins is a unique product of terroir and savoir faire. The Tokaji Eszencia of 1811 was reportedly of excellent quality when drunk 150 years later.

Friedrich Zoll, Aus meinen Studien über die Bekämpfung des unlauteren Wettbewerbes, in: Festschrift für Hermann Isay, Berlin 1933, 229.

Albert Osterrieth, Die Hager Revisonskonferenz 1925, Berlin 1926.

A case in point is the protection of French Champagne against its Spanish impostors: Bollinger v. Costa Brava, English High Court, 16 December 1960, [1961] rpc 116, 127. See also Bollinger v. Costa Brava, English High Court, 13 November 1959, [1960] rpc 16.

Stefan Ladas, Patents, Trademarks and Related Rights, Cambridge Mass.1974, vol 3 p. 1685.

“Or it’s gone sour, or it’s from Colares”: A somewhat ambivalent endorsement from the Portuguese writer Eça de Queiroz about the white Malvasia wine from the windswept dunes of Colares, close to the Atlantic Ocean.

Aceto Balsamico is an example where protection based on registration achieves less than protection based on preventing misconceptions: While the German courts found “Aceto Balsamico” originating from Germany misleading, the European Court of Justice in case C-432/18 held that these parts of the registered denomination Aceto Balsamico di Modena were unprotected and free for all to use. Earlier examples of protection based on misconceptions include denial of registration of the trade mark “Hoefelmayrs Silber Camembert” for cheese by the German Patent Office (decision of 21 January 1919, BlPMZ 1919, 11), although the French courts had regarded Camembert as generic (e.g. Cour d’Appel d’Orléans, 20. January 1926, Gazette du Palais 1926 I, 595). In the same vein, the German Imperial Supreme Court, decision of 2 Februar 1934, MuW 1934, 206 held that the term “Whisky” should be reserved for products originating from the UK., a perception not shared by consumers in the UK or elsewhere.

Until the wine makes heads reel, from Mozart’s Don Giovanni, of course.

Not such a rhetorical question given the numerous decisions involving traditional terms as “Elderflower Champagne” in the UK: Taittinger and Others v. Allbev Limited and Another, English Court of Appeal, 25 June 1993, 25 iic 278 [1994]; or “Champagner Bratbirne” in Germany: Federal Supreme Court, 19 May 2005, grur 2005, 957.

Prosek/Prosecco just above Trieste (a place that belonged to the Austro-Hungarian empire for six hundred years, so nothing to do with Italy) was the place from where the karst wine was transported down to the ships. The Italian Prosecco denomination around originally Valdobbiadene/Conegliano was more than one hundred miles away from Prosecco, was enlarged due to some political backroom deals and encompassed Prosecco only when Croatia with its denomination “Prošek” wanted to join the EU. A rather cavalier move (but then again, this was the time of Il Cavaliere).

John Mortimer, Rumpole and the Blind Tasting, in: Rumpole’s Last Case, Oxford 1987.

This is particularly so where actual consumer perception differs from the specification of a geographical indication: Never ask where the pigs for the Parma ham come from (it may be Spain), the milk from the mozzarella di latte di bufala (could be 50% Polish milk not from buffalo cows), or what a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo has to do with the Tuscan village of Montepulciano: Nothing really.

Italy’s claim for world-wide recognition of its own geographical indications stands in marked contrast to its failure to protect foreign indications: – Italian Supreme Court, 3 April 1996, [1996] European Trade Mark Reports 169 (protection for Pilsener Urquell as an ao denied); Italian Supreme Court, 21 May 2001, 34 iic 676 [2003] (protection for Budweiser beer (from Budweis) as an ao denied); Italian Supreme Court, 20 September 2012, 46 iic 881 |2015] (protection for Bavaria against beer not originating from Bavaria denied). You should not have a beer on that.

A red wine (Touriga Nacional) from the Douro region, and a concept.

Viva Bacchus, long live Bachus, Bachus was a decent man! Mozart, Die Entführung aus dem Serail. This time, the wine came from Cyprus.

Don Giovanni in Mozart’s Don Giovanni: “The table is already set. You, my dear friends, play the music!” (As music is the food of love, but that would be Les Préludes to another book).

Foreign visitors to German beer festivals may learn “Prost”. For wine, “zum Wohl” is more common.

Of unclear origin (Cinzano?). Makes Japanese girls giggle.

Inscription found on an 11th century wine amphora from Škocjan in the karst region above Trieste. Linguistic origin unclear, perhaps old Slavic for “stay healthy”. Now used as an inscription on the rather unusual wine amphoras sold by a Slovenian vineyard from Dutovlje.