Wine Law

8 PDO or GIs; and 9) objective references to the characteristics of the product, for instance, colours and olfactive and gustatory qualities. Moreover, a health warning message must be placed on every advertisement allowed, and it must not contain any allegation whatsoever on health benefit 31 . According to the law, advertising must not be an incentive to drink as any drinking is bad, and the consumer lacks the intelligence to understand the difference between responsible drinking and binge drinking. Consequently, the allowed content of the advertising will be very limited to objective information about the product, or its production, consumption or commercialisation. It must not depict any pleasurable moment associated with wine or convey any positive information or feelings. Therefore, wine cannot be associated with anything that could evoke, among others, conviviality, partying, evasion, dreams, sensuality. Thus, to show the product in a favourable light – the very aim of advertising – is forbidden. Overall, this dramatically reduces the interest of making advertisements at all, since the very point of making ads is to incentivise the consumption of a product or the purchase of a specific trademark. 2.3.1. Examples Judges make a strict application of the law. Their appraisal of what constitutes an “objective information” and an “incentive to drink” leaves little space for creativity. For example, the ad here depicted was deemed illegal. Although it portrays, in quite a clever way, the shape of a woman dressed in a red dress that turns out to be the wine itself (in French, “ robe ” means both a dress and the colour of the wine), it was considered an encouragement to drink wine by associating wine and elegance 32 . 31 CJUE, 6 September 2012, aff. C-544/10 about the word “digest”. 32 CA (Court of Appeal) Paris, 9 June 2004, no. 2004/01704.