Russia’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture has permitted the continued use of the brand names ‘Sovetskoye shampanskoye’ (Soviet champagne) and Konyak (Cognac) on bottles of these popular drinks for domestic sale within Russia. Russia will not longer use the brand names ‘champagne’ and ‘cognac’ on bottles for exports and neither will it use Latin letters in the words Shampanskoye and Konyak to completely eliminate any confusion between the appearance of the Russian drinks with traditional French brand names on the world market. Justifying their retention of the Cyrillic brand name ‘shampanskoye’, the Russians admit that the use of a different name, such as ‘sparkling wine’ will reduce sales. ‘Every civilised person knows the difference between ‘champagne’ and ‘sparkling,’ says Igor Kotlyarov, chief of the department in charge of grape-growing and wine-making. Wouldn’t those who persist in using the name ‘Champagne’ for cheap Australian sparkling wine agree! ‘When the French forced us to use this other name in the Soviet era, we lost a lot of money as both the production and sales dropped by half straight away’, Kotlyarov said. ‘The same will happen again if we use the word ‘brandy’ for our superb Daghestan spirits drink, as everyone in Russia knows that ‘brandy’ is a far cry from ‘konyak,’ he added. For exports, Russia will stick to international rules and sell Sovetskoye Shampanskoye as ‘Russian sparkling wine’ and its konyak as ‘brandy’.
