You don’t expect to find so much politics in a booze mag, but there’s an intriguing story in a recent edition of the Drinks Magazine. Relations between Britain and Argentina have been very fraught of late, so the good folk at Chapel Down, the internationally renowned vineyard in Kent, decided to promote peace and goodwill by importing Malbec grapes from Argentina to make a special English wine, called ‘An English Salute‘, to mark World Malbec Day, which took place on Tuesday. The vineyard planned to sell the wine in Gaucho, the chain of Argentine-themed steakhouses.
However, the European Commission blocked this neat marketing initiative on the grounds that grapes imported from outside the EU and crushed in Kent cannot legally be called wine (or indeed Malbec). Chapel Down has 1,000 or so bottles of “sensational” wine that it cannot sell, even if it is renamed ‘Succulent and Stimulating Formented Berry Beverage’ or words to that effect.
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