ZURICH, SWITZERLAND / AMONG THE VINES – Switzerland’s largest court has rejected three appeals from French groups who object to absinthe being a registered Protected Geographical Indication (PGI). The Federal Administrative Tribunal in St Gallen has left the door open for the three to appeal to the Federal Tribunal, the country’s highest court.

Absinthe spent a century as an underground alcoholic drink and now it’s at the centre of new battles, this time over the right to use its name rather than whether or not “the green fairy” had wicked mystical powers. The Federal Agriculture Office in August 2012 awarded PGI status to three names for the beverage: Absinthe, Fée verte and La Bleue.

The names in French apply in all languages.

During the consultation process 42 objections were registered, half of them from outside the country. Twenty-one went on to file legal appeals. They come from Switzerland, France and Germany.

The court in its 29 July 2013 ruling said that two of the three groups’ statutes do not give them the right to appeal on behalf of their members, the Confédération Européenne des Producteurs de Spiritueux and the Fédération Française des Spiritueux. Les Fils d’Emile Pernot, a French distillery, has not provided proof that it exports to Switzerland and therefore hasn’t shown that PGI status is having a negative impact.

The European Union created the IGP 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 IGPs 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.

Switzerland has 29 PGIs and AOCs, with another 12 going through the registration process.