Neuchatel town loses its battle to claim absinthe PGI status

ZURICH, SWITZERLAND – Absinthe, Fée Verte and La Bleue can’t be claimed by the Neuchatel town of Val-de-Travers for PGI (protected geographical indication) status, a Swiss federal high court ruled 12 August.

The court in St Gallen overturned an August 2012 decision by the Federal Agriculture Office that had allowed the town to register the product’s name for its exclusive use. That decision was backed by a lower federal court in August 2013 which dismissed three complaints from France – but the Administrative Tribunal said at the time that the three could pursue their case with the higher court.

Absinthe, said the court today, is not limited to a product from Val-de-Travers but is a generic term, as are its other popular labels, for a type of product made in several places. The professional absinthe producers association failed to provide proof that the terms are specific to the town, argued the court. The three names are used in French, in all languages.

Eleven complaints had been filed with the court, some from France, others from Switzerland and Germany, the three areas where the drink has long been produced.

Absinthe was banned in Switzerland, as in several other countries, for nearly a century, from 1908 to 2005.

The European Union created the PGI seal in 1992 and it is used to protect the names of such agricultural products as France’s Bayonne ham and Champagne. Switzerland and the European Union entered into a system of mutual recognition for PGIs (IGP in French) and AOCs (also called AOPs) in December 2011.

French producers of a similar drink have been unhappy with Switzerland’s efforts to monopolize the use of the name, a situation that recalls the fight by the tiny Swiss village of Champagne to use the town’s name on their aperitif flutes, a fight they lost to the French sparkling wine industry.