French wine snobs angry at iPhone for the most pretentious reason ever

You may have heard that Apple’s considering unveiling a gold-colored iPhone early next month. Well, so have a bunch of irate Frenchmen, it turns out.

The problem isn’t that the iPhone will be gold, per se. Rather, it’s that the device could be called a light shade of “champagne.” And now a trade association for French wines is preemptively warning Apple against doing so.

“We can’t say that a ‘champagne’ colour exists,” said Charles Goamaere, legal director for the Interprofessional Committee for Champagne Wine, in an interview with French media this week. Therefore, any company wanting to use the name ‘Champagne’ would be doing so [only] to attract all the benefits that surround [the label.]”

Goamere’s trade group is among the biggest defenders of the champagne brand. If you’re a sparkling wine producer located outside of the Champagne region of France, you have to call your beverage something else.


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