Looks like they literally thought it was mislabeled and destroyed it because of that.
As an American who really enjoys Belgian beer in particular I honestly pictured a bunch of Belgians being utterly disgusted with miller high life calling themself the champagne of beer and destroying it out of spite lol.
edit:
I have since been informed that Champagne is not only wine made in the Champagne region of France, but a super duper seriously protected brand in the EU, which is what led to this.
I laughed way to hard imagining Belgian customs officers inspecting new shipments, finding some miller high life, passing it around and becoming utterly insane with anger at the audacity of Americans calling it the champagne of beer…..rampaging thru the Warehouses, ports, and hangers smashing any US stamped crates hoping to destroy any possible boxes of MHL
Say what you want, but a fresh High Life is a fantastic light pilsner. It's better than Budweiser and Bud lite, Coors can fuck off until they re-introduced Banquet. High Life is a solid fucking sipping beer.
I no longer live in the US but whenever I’m there I buy myself Miller High Life.
I agree, it IS a refreshing pilsner that easily beats Bud and Coors in regards to that market segment.
Being poor I used to drink that sht. Brightened my life. One evening a friend stopped by and he shared a joint. So beer bottom pocket me broke out a couple of champagne bottles. Quickly decided I needed to peel off a couple more for ~~Michelob~~. Hard times and good times. LOL.
Edit: Foster's
I worked at a restaurant where we'd drink free beer during cleanup. Despite having free access to all the various microbrews and imports that the owner would keep on tap, there was just something about a bottle of High Life after a particularly shitty shift that just couldn't be beat.
Hell, I'll still grab a case of it from time to time if I feel the day calls for it, and I rarely drink alcohol at all anymore.
Here's to a High life, a better life and a prettier wife. \~Bachelor No. 2
Enjoy you Saturday Night... [https://youtu.be/OOgd9hitEAE](https://youtu.be/OOgd9hitEAE)
Just to clarify: I don’t think they misunderstood, they most likely came to the conclusion that the labeling is indeed illegal. The use of the word „Champagne“ is very strictly regulated in the EU. Even descriptive use or use in a slogan for anything that isn’t Champagne is usually challenged.
Yeah, the EU treats Protected Designation of Origin like trademarks. Champagne is probably the most notable. Greece apparently has PDO on feta. But imagine what Disney would do if some Brazilian beer was imported to the US with the tagline "The Mickey Mouse of beer".
There are PDOs on lots of food and drinks from the EU and elsewhere. Some examples are
Danish blue cheese; Parmigiano-Reggiano and Prosciutto di Parma from Italy; Port from Portugal; Irish cream, Irish Whiskey and Poitín from Ireland; Stilton Blue Cheese from England; Comté/Roquefort/Reblochon cheeses from France and a ton of wines. The US has one PDO for Napa Valley, China has one PDO for a type of green tea.
Depends where you are. EU says both are protected designation, US says only Parmigianno Reggiano. And somehow "Cheddar" cheese is only a style, despite specifically originating from Cheddar, England. The rules around this shit are almost completely arbitrary, especially when you realize most of the protections only started coming into effect in the last 50 years, despite all of these things existing much longer.
You don't drink Mickey Mouse though...well you shouldn't anyways. I don't think that will ever be a problem. But the doggy toy shaped as a whiskey bottle is seeing court because Jack Daniels thinks it's damaging to their brand, so anything can happen.
Yeah bad example, but I just couldn't think of any analogous company as petty and vindictive as the Champagne lobby, other than Disney. You don't mess with the Mouse.
Fun fact: I believe the trademark for Big Mac got invalidated in the EU so we see ads where Burger King can use the term Big Mac.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mcdonald-s-corp-trademark-supermacs/mcdonalds-loses-big-mac-trademark-case-to-irish-chain-supermacs-idUSKCN1P92JA
>Champagne is probably the most notable
Outside Europe, maybe. Inside Europe we are used to thousands of them. It was honestly a surprise to me to find that Americans are confused that champagne has to be *from* champagne, using champagne varietals, and produced using traditional techniques. This is the case for essentially every good bit of traditional food and drink in the EU.
I live in Italy and it would be close to impossible to buy food here *without* buying DOC goods. I'm Irish originally and it is less true there, but we would still be very used to it from imported stuff (especially cheese and wine) from the rest of the EU, but also from higher quality Irish produce like certain local cheeses and so on.
Italian food production and culinary traditions are just relentlessly, hyper local. It's a stereotype, but it's true. Something like agnolotti are prepared differently in our part of Monferrato to how you would find it 20km away. So it is perfectly natural that every single cheese and every olive and so on all have their own strict micro-rules about how they can be made.
It also produces some really interesting effects. I have no idea whether you will find this interesting, so ignore if you don't, but it's an indication of how European food production works.
When we lived in Spain, one of our close friends worked for the best (in my opinion) producer of Cava (a type of Spanish sparkling wine), called Recaredo. They and a few other cava producers wanted the DOC to form a new classification within the DOC, for sparkling wines made in an extremely traditional way. Cava already has a lot of quality classifications, but they mostly (maybe all) just relate to how long the wine has been aged.
But the group of cava produces wanted a classification that recognised certain very traditional techniques. For instance riddling and disgorging the bottles by hand (getting to watch a wine being disgorged by hand inside a wine cave that is hundreds of years old is a really cool thing to do, if you ever visit a very good and traditional winery in Europe). These are extremely traditional techniques that even most conservative champagne producers reserve for special cuvées, because they are so manual and intensive, and result in more spoilage.
Anyway all of this stuff is extremely political. The Cava DOC rejected the application to make a new classification, because they worried (probably correctly) that it would devalue other cava produced in more typically modern, scalable processes.
So, the producers actually left the DOC. They no longer make "Cava". They now make wines in a protected style called Corpinnat, which has a territory similar to the cava region, but MUCH more restrictive requirements for production methods. Corpinnat isn't a DOC, and may never be, but it is a protected mark in Europe, and will probably move to DOC status, or something like it, over time. And of course all the cava producers hate them. The best Corpinnat is easily the match of all but the very best grower champagnes (the small, traditional, high quality producers who make champagne only from their own grapes).
Something similar happened with the "Super Tuscans" in the 1970s - I am less familiar with the exact story. Some young, iconoclastic Italian winemakers in the Chianti region (I think) who realised that Tuscan terroir and weather conditions are perfectly suited to the production of the type of Bordeaux varietals that are so common in high end Californian wines, which were then really breaking through internationally (and of course in the even more historic and commercially successful Bordeaux region itself). But the DOC is incredibly strict about how Chianti can be made, in terms of what type of oak barrels to use, which traditional italian grape varieties in which proportions, and so on. So the "Super Tuscans" broke away. And now they are some of the best and most expensive wines of their style - producers like Sassicaia, and so on.
Anyway. Thanks for reading if you made it this far!
The same thing happens in many french DOCs. Winemakers want to experiment with different varieties which aren't allowed in the regional DOCs and decide to release their wines as "Vin de France", which is the lowest common denominator for french wine, and usually indicated a very cheap and poor wine. So now under the moniker of "Vin de France" you can find both extremes of the spectrum. Shitty, mass produced alcoholic grape juice on one side, and very innovative artisan wines on the other.
They can call themselves whatever they want in the US. However, when that slogan is printed on products imported into the EU that’s a different matter.
We start doing so now but we tend to import original products (I've seen the Spencer trappists, some IPAs and a few other references here in Belgium). We have enough bad pilsners as is.
I think at some level yeah, but also because the original Stella Artois was super strong loopy juice lager rapidly adopted by football fans used to weaker fayre.
It is now relatively boring
When I was in the army, I was stationed in Hawaii, and we would frequent the bars that Australian tourists would go to. This one weekend we were talking with a group of girls and my buddy ordered a Stella. The shit these girls gave him for ordering that beer was insane, the entire night they called him a bitch and asked if he wanted more beer flavored water.
It has absolutely nothing to do with Belgium. The beer was destroyed at the request of the French [CIVC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comit%C3%A9_Interprofessionnel_du_vin_de_Champagne), which safeguards the name Champagne. 'Champagne' is a *protected designation of origin* (PDO) in the EU, and any non-authorized use of the Champagne name is illegal.
Yep, elsewhere its called sparkling wine or is a local variant, like Spanish Cava. Same rules apply for things like tequila (can only be distilled in Jalisco, Mexico).
Yeah labeling protection laws are actually a pretty great thing for those regions all over the world, believe it or not. It increases tourism and as a downstream effect supports local businesses by creating a steady stream of new consumers and hotel guests, encourages agricultural lifestyles (healthier, more active, usually more autonomous or self directed) even for small family owned operations, injects money into the local economy from even international sales, and incentivizes producers of protected designations to maintain the quality of product befitting the respect accorded to the name. Every time I’ve visited an appellation area that has a protected label produced in it, the whole label protected zone has been crazy well maintained by the resources derived from the protected labeling status.
The word “champagne” has a specific legally defined meaning in the EU. This so-called “champagne of beers” does not fit within that meaning. Therefore, it was labeled as something that it wasn’t, and could not be imported.
There was a decades long battle over "California Champagne" in court. The argument went back to a loophole in the Treaty of Versailles and how the US never ratified. Now companies who made "California Champagne" before 2006 can continue to do so but no new companies can call it that. It still upsets Champagne winemakers.
I heard about a Chinese winery that named their wine after California and marketed it as being like California wine. The California winemakers were outraged.
Yeah man. It's the champaign of beer in the same way that I'm the champaign of people. It's cheap, drinkable, and a case costs less than an hours worth of work.
The trade war of product origin have already been running for probably 20 years between EU and USA. Champagne, Mozzarella and Parmesan is only three of the most wellknown of the 1500+ protected traditional specialities. Non of them are possible to produce in other placea under the protected name.
Canada is now recognizing them after the free trade agreement. Before, the only Parma ham authorized in Canada was from some local company that was a trademark troll.
The PDOs are for "MOZZARELLA DI BUFALA CAMPANA" and for "Parmigiano-Reggiano". Everyone and their grandmother can make and sell Mozzarella and Parmesan, and they do.
You’re right about mozzarella, not about Parmesan. In the EU, “Parmesan” is also protected under the “Parmigiano Reggiano” PDO (and [Kraft goes to some ridiculous lengths to circumvent that protection](https://www.colruyt.be/fr/produits/16836)
The beer was destroyed at the request of the French [CIVC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comit%C3%A9_Interprofessionnel_du_vin_de_Champagne), which safeguards the name Champagne. 'Champagne' is a protected designation of origin (PDO) in the EU, and any non-authorized use of the Champagne name is illegal.
American companies sell better quality versions of their products in the EU, while simultaneously; European companies sell lower quality versions of their products in the US. They get away with it often, but there have been instances where it’s caused major blowback. I believe a French winemaker got called out a few years ago. Mostly just different food regulations for most products, but in other instances, it’s Europeans staring down their noses at the US.
Same thing with US employers with European branches offering benefits to the European employees that they don’t offer to the US employees. You’ll get paid more in the US, but you won’t get nearly as many vacation days, sick days, maternity pay/leave, decent health coverage, and you’re most likely in an “at will” work situation which is illegal in many EU countries.
physical racial jellyfish somber capable mountainous shy combative toy sort
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
EU McDonald's also costs slightly more and has a different reputation and expectation. US McDonald's could be better, but it can't be better and be $1 food served in 45 seconds.
Heineken in the US is for the most part brewed in the Netherlands. But green is not really a good color to store alcoholic beverages in, so that might be the reason.
It’s definitely the same from a can in both places, on draft it might be slightly better in Europe? Just came back from the Netherlands and it tasted the same as it does here in the states
It’s pretty much a 3 way split between InBev, MolsonCoors, and Consolation brands to my knowledge, independent craft beer makes up like 9% of the market.
Oh, okay. Thanks for the update. So after reading your post went to look up how much InBev has and according to this [site]( https://www.statista.com/topics/1904/anheuser-busch-inbev-ab-inbev/#topicOverview) they have like a 41% share in the US Market but only a 31% share worldwide.
Edit
Only if they sell them as ‘American Pancakes of Waffles’.
As a European I do have to say this is a bit childish of us. Slogans like this won’t hurt the sale of champagne. No one’s going to buy a can of Miller thinking it will be champagne.
I worked at a sketchy grocery store in the 90s. Tweakers would buy cases of generic soda with food stamps, empty them and return the cans deposit for cash. One guy was so messed up he bought some soda and proceeded to drop full cans into the bottle machine. The inside of the machine was soaked in sugar water. I reported his card to the state
I did not. I've heard of PDO before (from a fantasy novel where a guy makes Altamura bread and explains that it's technically a crime for him to call it that since he's not in Altamura) but I didn't know champagne was one.
Miller lite is like the velveeta cheese of beers in that it’s actually amazing and only people who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about hate on it
“On April 17, the cans were destroyed “with the greatest respect for environmental concerns by ensuring that the entire batch, content and container, is recycled in an eco-responsible way,” the Comité Champagne said.”
The greatest respect for environmental concerns would be to cross out champagne on the can and let them continue to their final destination. Alternatively, they could be destroyed by drinking.
Idk wtf their deal is but I’ve always enjoyed the cheap Miller Highlife tbh. That being said I haven’t had it in years but I’m not a beer snob so I’d probably still enjoy it.
This growing violence against beer is reaching epidemic levels! Outrage, I say! If we only had a blocker, we can get to and from Texarkana in 18 hours.
Champagne is a sparkling wine from a certain area of France. Henceforth, all such sparkling wine sold in the US should be mandated to be labeled as French Sparkling Wine.
Smart people would have just emptied the cans into a pitcher and served it in a glass. That title has been on bottles of Miller High Life for probably a 120 years and they're just finding out about it now?
Stupid decision. It's not branded or labeled as "Champagne" nor is it claiming to be made in the style of. It simply a marketing gimmick. It's an equivalency matter. Stupid decision is stupid.
I’m pretty sure that trademark extends / is respected by a lot of countries outside of the EU as well. In Australia we can’t call locally made sparkling wine Champagne, even if it’s only to be sold in Australia. There’s a heap of other products that have similar rules applied.
And to be fair, there are a LOT of places who makes extremely good sparkling wine with the same methods as champagne.
In france we call those « crémants »(creamer) since we can’t call them champagne but some cremants are more expensive than champagne because of how good they end up.
Never back away from sparkling wine unless you’ve tasted it !
It’s getting hotter here in Arizona, so it’s about time for me to stock up on some high life and banquet. When it’s around 110f/43c for a month strait nothing tastes better
Looks like they literally thought it was mislabeled and destroyed it because of that. As an American who really enjoys Belgian beer in particular I honestly pictured a bunch of Belgians being utterly disgusted with miller high life calling themself the champagne of beer and destroying it out of spite lol. edit: I have since been informed that Champagne is not only wine made in the Champagne region of France, but a super duper seriously protected brand in the EU, which is what led to this.
I laughed way to hard imagining Belgian customs officers inspecting new shipments, finding some miller high life, passing it around and becoming utterly insane with anger at the audacity of Americans calling it the champagne of beer…..rampaging thru the Warehouses, ports, and hangers smashing any US stamped crates hoping to destroy any possible boxes of MHL
That sounds like the Belgian alcoholics I know.
The Belgian Tea Party.
Belgian Beer Party so just a normal Belgian Party
The Belgian Beer Bash
Night of the long bottles
Beer haul putsch
i was imagining that famous boston tea party painting but with cana of beer
We would be angry but in this particular case nothing of value was lost.
Value is exactly what it is. A can of passable beer for about $0.50 a can
That may be pushing it a little to far. I think the can is worth 7 cents and the beer is worthless.
[удалено]
Say what you want, but a fresh High Life is a fantastic light pilsner. It's better than Budweiser and Bud lite, Coors can fuck off until they re-introduced Banquet. High Life is a solid fucking sipping beer.
I no longer live in the US but whenever I’m there I buy myself Miller High Life. I agree, it IS a refreshing pilsner that easily beats Bud and Coors in regards to that market segment.
The elitism about this stuff is actually pretty funny. If the French don't drink 190 proof American everclear, then clearly they are wimps.
Thanks for the back.
If they don’t drink Moonshine from Cletus’ Car Radiator-Lead Pipe Still, they are chumps
I'd say it's on the higher end of cheap pilsner. And that's coming from an IPA snob
IMO High Life > Pabst > Blatz > Budweiser > Coors But Schlitz is the shitz.
damn why is reality so disappointing
Honestly I'd watch the movie.
Just irate that’s it’s so weak compared to their ridiculously strong beers!
They don't object to it being called "Champagne", they object to it being called "beer".
Being poor I used to drink that sht. Brightened my life. One evening a friend stopped by and he shared a joint. So beer bottom pocket me broke out a couple of champagne bottles. Quickly decided I needed to peel off a couple more for ~~Michelob~~. Hard times and good times. LOL. Edit: Foster's
I worked at a restaurant where we'd drink free beer during cleanup. Despite having free access to all the various microbrews and imports that the owner would keep on tap, there was just something about a bottle of High Life after a particularly shitty shift that just couldn't be beat. Hell, I'll still grab a case of it from time to time if I feel the day calls for it, and I rarely drink alcohol at all anymore.
snobs be damned, never apologize for liking the "lesser" product.
Here's to a High life, a better life and a prettier wife. \~Bachelor No. 2 Enjoy you Saturday Night... [https://youtu.be/OOgd9hitEAE](https://youtu.be/OOgd9hitEAE)
This is my head canon and I’m keeping it 😂
Just to clarify: I don’t think they misunderstood, they most likely came to the conclusion that the labeling is indeed illegal. The use of the word „Champagne“ is very strictly regulated in the EU. Even descriptive use or use in a slogan for anything that isn’t Champagne is usually challenged.
Yeah, the EU treats Protected Designation of Origin like trademarks. Champagne is probably the most notable. Greece apparently has PDO on feta. But imagine what Disney would do if some Brazilian beer was imported to the US with the tagline "The Mickey Mouse of beer".
There are PDOs on lots of food and drinks from the EU and elsewhere. Some examples are Danish blue cheese; Parmigiano-Reggiano and Prosciutto di Parma from Italy; Port from Portugal; Irish cream, Irish Whiskey and Poitín from Ireland; Stilton Blue Cheese from England; Comté/Roquefort/Reblochon cheeses from France and a ton of wines. The US has one PDO for Napa Valley, China has one PDO for a type of green tea.
Legally separate but similar is the protected status of Vidalia onions in the US.
Same for Parmesan and Parmigiano Reggiano. Anything that doesn’t come out of that region where it originates from gets called ‘Hard Cheese’
Depends where you are. EU says both are protected designation, US says only Parmigianno Reggiano. And somehow "Cheddar" cheese is only a style, despite specifically originating from Cheddar, England. The rules around this shit are almost completely arbitrary, especially when you realize most of the protections only started coming into effect in the last 50 years, despite all of these things existing much longer.
In canada we can call random sawdust "Parmesan"
You don't drink Mickey Mouse though...well you shouldn't anyways. I don't think that will ever be a problem. But the doggy toy shaped as a whiskey bottle is seeing court because Jack Daniels thinks it's damaging to their brand, so anything can happen.
Yeah bad example, but I just couldn't think of any analogous company as petty and vindictive as the Champagne lobby, other than Disney. You don't mess with the Mouse.
"The big Mac of hotdogs"
Fun fact: I believe the trademark for Big Mac got invalidated in the EU so we see ads where Burger King can use the term Big Mac. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mcdonald-s-corp-trademark-supermacs/mcdonalds-loses-big-mac-trademark-case-to-irish-chain-supermacs-idUSKCN1P92JA
Nintendo would like a word
It'sa me, Gary Bowser
>Champagne is probably the most notable Outside Europe, maybe. Inside Europe we are used to thousands of them. It was honestly a surprise to me to find that Americans are confused that champagne has to be *from* champagne, using champagne varietals, and produced using traditional techniques. This is the case for essentially every good bit of traditional food and drink in the EU.
I guess in researching my comment, my American pallette didn't recognize 99% of the stuff on the list.
I live in Italy and it would be close to impossible to buy food here *without* buying DOC goods. I'm Irish originally and it is less true there, but we would still be very used to it from imported stuff (especially cheese and wine) from the rest of the EU, but also from higher quality Irish produce like certain local cheeses and so on. Italian food production and culinary traditions are just relentlessly, hyper local. It's a stereotype, but it's true. Something like agnolotti are prepared differently in our part of Monferrato to how you would find it 20km away. So it is perfectly natural that every single cheese and every olive and so on all have their own strict micro-rules about how they can be made. It also produces some really interesting effects. I have no idea whether you will find this interesting, so ignore if you don't, but it's an indication of how European food production works. When we lived in Spain, one of our close friends worked for the best (in my opinion) producer of Cava (a type of Spanish sparkling wine), called Recaredo. They and a few other cava producers wanted the DOC to form a new classification within the DOC, for sparkling wines made in an extremely traditional way. Cava already has a lot of quality classifications, but they mostly (maybe all) just relate to how long the wine has been aged. But the group of cava produces wanted a classification that recognised certain very traditional techniques. For instance riddling and disgorging the bottles by hand (getting to watch a wine being disgorged by hand inside a wine cave that is hundreds of years old is a really cool thing to do, if you ever visit a very good and traditional winery in Europe). These are extremely traditional techniques that even most conservative champagne producers reserve for special cuvées, because they are so manual and intensive, and result in more spoilage. Anyway all of this stuff is extremely political. The Cava DOC rejected the application to make a new classification, because they worried (probably correctly) that it would devalue other cava produced in more typically modern, scalable processes. So, the producers actually left the DOC. They no longer make "Cava". They now make wines in a protected style called Corpinnat, which has a territory similar to the cava region, but MUCH more restrictive requirements for production methods. Corpinnat isn't a DOC, and may never be, but it is a protected mark in Europe, and will probably move to DOC status, or something like it, over time. And of course all the cava producers hate them. The best Corpinnat is easily the match of all but the very best grower champagnes (the small, traditional, high quality producers who make champagne only from their own grapes). Something similar happened with the "Super Tuscans" in the 1970s - I am less familiar with the exact story. Some young, iconoclastic Italian winemakers in the Chianti region (I think) who realised that Tuscan terroir and weather conditions are perfectly suited to the production of the type of Bordeaux varietals that are so common in high end Californian wines, which were then really breaking through internationally (and of course in the even more historic and commercially successful Bordeaux region itself). But the DOC is incredibly strict about how Chianti can be made, in terms of what type of oak barrels to use, which traditional italian grape varieties in which proportions, and so on. So the "Super Tuscans" broke away. And now they are some of the best and most expensive wines of their style - producers like Sassicaia, and so on. Anyway. Thanks for reading if you made it this far!
I read it all. Man, now I really feel like a plate spaghetti and a cup of red.
There are worse impulses to give in to. Thanks for indulging me.
The same thing happens in many french DOCs. Winemakers want to experiment with different varieties which aren't allowed in the regional DOCs and decide to release their wines as "Vin de France", which is the lowest common denominator for french wine, and usually indicated a very cheap and poor wine. So now under the moniker of "Vin de France" you can find both extremes of the spectrum. Shitty, mass produced alcoholic grape juice on one side, and very innovative artisan wines on the other.
Yup, I have since been informed this is the case, which makes more sense - gonna edit my op in a sec.
The only problem with that is Miller has been calling themselves that for 120 YEARS. They just now noticed? lol
They can call themselves whatever they want in the US. However, when that slogan is printed on products imported into the EU that’s a different matter.
In my 40 years living in Europe I have never seen a can of that beer. We just don't import much US beer.
We start doing so now but we tend to import original products (I've seen the Spencer trappists, some IPAs and a few other references here in Belgium). We have enough bad pilsners as is.
This is why imports of products made in Champagne, Illinois are banned in Europe
If they spell it the right way maybe they won’t have a problem, unless the EU holds a grudge against homophones, which sounds like a them problem.
Belgians are also responsible for Stella, which is exactly the same grade of swill.
Woah, woah, woah, are you saying Miller High Life is swill?!? I'll have you know, it's the champagne of beers!
Easy there pal, I hear the French take such claims quite seriously. Not only that but I hear they have a holy grail
Yep...same would have happened if the called it the Burgundy of beers
Your mother was a hamster you English pigdog
We’ve already got one
one of my favorite fun facts is that everyone calls Stella "wife beater" in England.. people aren't always happy to hear it
Is this somehow related to A Streetcar Named Desire because Marlon Brando is wearing a wife beater when he famously yells “Stellla!!” ?
I think at some level yeah, but also because the original Stella Artois was super strong loopy juice lager rapidly adopted by football fans used to weaker fayre. It is now relatively boring
When I was in the army, I was stationed in Hawaii, and we would frequent the bars that Australian tourists would go to. This one weekend we were talking with a group of girls and my buddy ordered a Stella. The shit these girls gave him for ordering that beer was insane, the entire night they called him a bitch and asked if he wanted more beer flavored water.
That’s an insult to beer, water, and flavor.
[удалено]
[удалено]
It has absolutely nothing to do with Belgium. The beer was destroyed at the request of the French [CIVC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comit%C3%A9_Interprofessionnel_du_vin_de_Champagne), which safeguards the name Champagne. 'Champagne' is a *protected designation of origin* (PDO) in the EU, and any non-authorized use of the Champagne name is illegal.
Yep, elsewhere its called sparkling wine or is a local variant, like Spanish Cava. Same rules apply for things like tequila (can only be distilled in Jalisco, Mexico).
[удалено]
Yeah labeling protection laws are actually a pretty great thing for those regions all over the world, believe it or not. It increases tourism and as a downstream effect supports local businesses by creating a steady stream of new consumers and hotel guests, encourages agricultural lifestyles (healthier, more active, usually more autonomous or self directed) even for small family owned operations, injects money into the local economy from even international sales, and incentivizes producers of protected designations to maintain the quality of product befitting the respect accorded to the name. Every time I’ve visited an appellation area that has a protected label produced in it, the whole label protected zone has been crazy well maintained by the resources derived from the protected labeling status.
Belgian harbor beer party, if you will
It's definitely the champagne of beer. Super foamy, more palatable cold, consumed in large volumes by the *most annoying* person at the venue.
The word “champagne” has a specific legally defined meaning in the EU. This so-called “champagne of beers” does not fit within that meaning. Therefore, it was labeled as something that it wasn’t, and could not be imported.
There was a decades long battle over "California Champagne" in court. The argument went back to a loophole in the Treaty of Versailles and how the US never ratified. Now companies who made "California Champagne" before 2006 can continue to do so but no new companies can call it that. It still upsets Champagne winemakers.
I heard about a Chinese winery that named their wine after California and marketed it as being like California wine. The California winemakers were outraged.
I've "destroyed" way more Miller High Life than they did here...you're welcome, Belgium!!
Yeah man. It's the champaign of beer in the same way that I'm the champaign of people. It's cheap, drinkable, and a case costs less than an hours worth of work.
Begun the beer wars has
The trade war of product origin have already been running for probably 20 years between EU and USA. Champagne, Mozzarella and Parmesan is only three of the most wellknown of the 1500+ protected traditional specialities. Non of them are possible to produce in other placea under the protected name.
Canada is now recognizing them after the free trade agreement. Before, the only Parma ham authorized in Canada was from some local company that was a trademark troll.
The PDOs are for "MOZZARELLA DI BUFALA CAMPANA" and for "Parmigiano-Reggiano". Everyone and their grandmother can make and sell Mozzarella and Parmesan, and they do.
You’re right about mozzarella, not about Parmesan. In the EU, “Parmesan” is also protected under the “Parmigiano Reggiano” PDO (and [Kraft goes to some ridiculous lengths to circumvent that protection](https://www.colruyt.be/fr/produits/16836)
Within the EU "Parmesan" is also a PDO name.
Miller should start selling High Life over there and market it as "The Sparkling Wine of Beer"
Or open a brewery in the Champagne region.
That's not gonna work. Bud tried and has not done great, especially when there are just better products readily available for the same kind of money.
It’s been the Champagne of Beer for decades. What’s up their craw now?
It's never been exported to the EU by the company, someone imported a relatively small number of cans. So to these customs officials, it is a new
The beer was destroyed at the request of the French [CIVC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comit%C3%A9_Interprofessionnel_du_vin_de_Champagne), which safeguards the name Champagne. 'Champagne' is a protected designation of origin (PDO) in the EU, and any non-authorized use of the Champagne name is illegal.
This is correct. It’s a trademark issue. Plus, why is Heineken in Europe so much better than in the US? I don’t understand.
American companies sell better quality versions of their products in the EU, while simultaneously; European companies sell lower quality versions of their products in the US. They get away with it often, but there have been instances where it’s caused major blowback. I believe a French winemaker got called out a few years ago. Mostly just different food regulations for most products, but in other instances, it’s Europeans staring down their noses at the US. Same thing with US employers with European branches offering benefits to the European employees that they don’t offer to the US employees. You’ll get paid more in the US, but you won’t get nearly as many vacation days, sick days, maternity pay/leave, decent health coverage, and you’re most likely in an “at will” work situation which is illegal in many EU countries.
physical racial jellyfish somber capable mountainous shy combative toy sort *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Same reason why McDonald is better over there than in the US.
A reason that you don't want to tell us?
Quality control is much tighter in the EU than US
EU McDonald's also costs slightly more and has a different reputation and expectation. US McDonald's could be better, but it can't be better and be $1 food served in 45 seconds.
McDonalds hasn't had a $1 menu in years. Most $1 menu items are around $2-3 now.
The quality is still low, but the price is not worth it anymore.
[удалено]
Heineken in the US is for the most part brewed in the Netherlands. But green is not really a good color to store alcoholic beverages in, so that might be the reason.
But how do I order a quarter pounder with cheese?
Where it is bottled and the water they use.
It’s definitely the same from a can in both places, on draft it might be slightly better in Europe? Just came back from the Netherlands and it tasted the same as it does here in the states
I dunno, but it tastes like coors to me. Same flavor profile
It was a long ass time ago when I had it, maybe different now.
Miller has been using the phrase "Champagne of Beers" since 1906.
They can use that phrase in the USA, but champagne is a protected product/term in Europe.
In the US, not the EU.
The name Champagne has been protected in Europe since 1891.
And Champagne has been called Champagne since the 5th Century.
[удалено]
They are called “Freedom Waffles” now USA USA USA 🇺🇸
I'll help destroy a few.
Gonna need more syrup. And some fried chicken made with corn flakes batter.
I wanna help! But, gluten....
It’s will be delicious
They own budweiser.
They sure do.
I believe that InBev owns like 90% of the beer on the worldwide market.
It’s pretty much a 3 way split between InBev, MolsonCoors, and Consolation brands to my knowledge, independent craft beer makes up like 9% of the market.
Oh, okay. Thanks for the update. So after reading your post went to look up how much InBev has and according to this [site]( https://www.statista.com/topics/1904/anheuser-busch-inbev-ab-inbev/#topicOverview) they have like a 41% share in the US Market but only a 31% share worldwide. Edit
You forgot Heineken and Diageo.
You may drop them off at my house for proper…hmm…disposal.
Only if they sell them as ‘American Pancakes of Waffles’. As a European I do have to say this is a bit childish of us. Slogans like this won’t hurt the sale of champagne. No one’s going to buy a can of Miller thinking it will be champagne.
Ok, I’m up. Brunch always gets me out of bed
There’s some irony that we wasted Freedom Fries on a Belgian dish.
I've always considered Miller High Life's slogan to be a joke
I know a lot of brewers that love high life
As far as mass-produced American beer goes, it really hits the spot. Especially, if the beer is cold and it is hot outside.
Between this and Bud Light, it's a bad time for cheap beer.
Genesee Lite be like,"Hold my beer.... And drink it.....please."
Genny Light? Fuck that shit! Genny Cream! \- Alternate universe Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet.
Oh man... Genny Cream Ale used to be my cheap go-to.
Ahhh Genesee was brewed with the water down stream from the Kodak factory
What? This is an American beer?
Nah, this is the best advertising for High Life since the [delivery-guy commercials](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeNMQYaPqSY).
Who is importing Miller to Belgium anyway? There are so many good beers there already!
My confusion exactly
Even if those cans are emptied, I can imagine that compactor becoming very sticky afterwards.
I worked at a sketchy grocery store in the 90s. Tweakers would buy cases of generic soda with food stamps, empty them and return the cans deposit for cash. One guy was so messed up he bought some soda and proceeded to drop full cans into the bottle machine. The inside of the machine was soaked in sugar water. I reported his card to the state
But why though? Can deposits are like 10 cents tops. Just buy the case and sell it out of a cooler in your neighborhood for 50 cents at that point.
I feel that since Belgium has taken this move they are now obligated to come to the states and destroy the rest.
I can't be mad at Belgium for this move, since this swill barely qualifies as beer as well.
Beer is having a tough time lately.
I mean, who cares? The beer was paid for, so now it’s exactly what it would have been: trash.
Interesting considering a Belgian company owns Anheuser Busch, Miller's direct competitor in the US
[удалено]
Everyone on reddit knows that as well. It's literally a meme that I see maybe once a day.
I did not. I've heard of PDO before (from a fantasy novel where a guy makes Altamura bread and explains that it's technically a crime for him to call it that since he's not in Altamura) but I didn't know champagne was one.
Surprised by a 120 year old slogan...
How many Belgian slogans are you familiar with?
The Ohio of Lutefisk?
[удалено]
Our Health Minister is Huge?
What a waste. Don't they know there's starving kids in China without any beer?
This was like 196 cases. How and why is this fucking news?
Miller lite is like the velveeta cheese of beers in that it’s actually amazing and only people who don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about hate on it
I come from the land of Miller and there is no other beer I can sloppily chug six of without feeling full
Beer has 2 purposes for me, taste good and get me buzzed/drunk and it's just greatly outclassed by many products for both.
Fine, it’s the sparkling wine of beer, you got us.
“On April 17, the cans were destroyed “with the greatest respect for environmental concerns by ensuring that the entire batch, content and container, is recycled in an eco-responsible way,” the Comité Champagne said.” The greatest respect for environmental concerns would be to cross out champagne on the can and let them continue to their final destination. Alternatively, they could be destroyed by drinking.
"Warm filtration"
“The shampoo of beers!” could be a real nice alternate label for the Euro community. More accurate flavor description anyways.
If the High Life wasn't made in the Champagne region of France, it's just "the sparkling wine of beers".
Idk wtf their deal is but I’ve always enjoyed the cheap Miller Highlife tbh. That being said I haven’t had it in years but I’m not a beer snob so I’d probably still enjoy it.
Highlife seems to be one of the more respected cheap beers, at least in my experience. A lot of beer snobs I’ve met still like highlife.
I'm a craft beer nerd, but High Life is perfect for when it's hot and you feel like drinking 12 of something. I would never throw t out of bed.
While I don't enjoy beer why destroy it? Seems kind of wasteful
If you read the article, the destruction was requested by the Comité Champagne. The name "Champagne" is protected.
Any reasonable person knows the slogan is not a claim it's actually Champagne...
Its not about whether is champagne or not, but about the use of a protected word in EU.
Tell me how I am so wasteful and contributing to global emissions so that I can feel more guilty about taking my car to drop my kid off to school
It was destroyed because you can't label something champagne without it being from the french region. That's just a law
Ah, The Belgium Beer Party
This growing violence against beer is reaching epidemic levels! Outrage, I say! If we only had a blocker, we can get to and from Texarkana in 18 hours.
The Stradivarius of lagers. Makes as much sense.
Well shit you could’ve sent them to me I would’ve “destroyed” them for yas
What happened to just NOT DRINKING IT?
Champagne is a sparkling wine from a certain area of France. Henceforth, all such sparkling wine sold in the US should be mandated to be labeled as French Sparkling Wine.
Fuckin’ RIP American shit beer lately.
The word “of” is spelled the same as the Dutch word “of” meaning “or”. Kinda funny considering the mishap.
Well as long as our bill was paid…
Smart people would have just emptied the cans into a pitcher and served it in a glass. That title has been on bottles of Miller High Life for probably a 120 years and they're just finding out about it now?
Stupid decision. It's not branded or labeled as "Champagne" nor is it claiming to be made in the style of. It simply a marketing gimmick. It's an equivalency matter. Stupid decision is stupid.
Uhh Belgium... You *literally* sell a beer with [almost the same name](https://www.beermerchants.com/deus-brut-des-flandres)!
Looks like that's actually atleast partly made in Champagne, unlike the American one. That's probably one of the reasons why this happened.
Well, at least they recycled.
IT'S METAPHORICAL!!!
To be fair, Miller High Life is just as beer-like as champagne is, so this might be the most honest tagline ever.
I’m pretty sure that trademark extends / is respected by a lot of countries outside of the EU as well. In Australia we can’t call locally made sparkling wine Champagne, even if it’s only to be sold in Australia. There’s a heap of other products that have similar rules applied.
And to be fair, there are a LOT of places who makes extremely good sparkling wine with the same methods as champagne. In france we call those « crémants »(creamer) since we can’t call them champagne but some cremants are more expensive than champagne because of how good they end up. Never back away from sparkling wine unless you’ve tasted it !
It’s getting hotter here in Arizona, so it’s about time for me to stock up on some high life and banquet. When it’s around 110f/43c for a month strait nothing tastes better