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Airline sued for not serving champagne


Still Waters

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A Canadian man has filed a lawsuit against Sunwing Airlines for promising a champagne service and instead serving sparkling wine.

Daniel Macduff booked a holiday to Cuba through Sunwing that advertised a complimentary on-board champagne toast.

Mr Macduff, from Quebec, said he received a cheaper bubbly instead - and only on the outgoing flight.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-41669611

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He should be glad he got anything at all.

What a stupid thing to be suing about. If the judge is smart then he/she will dismiss the suit and tell the man to act like an adult instead of a spoiled toddler and just get up and get on with life.

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I doubt he's expecting pain and suffering money. LOL. 

It is false advertising, though, to say you're serving the expensive stuff, and then serve the cheap stuff. 

They changed their advertising, and that's probably what he wanted. 

The French know the difference, and apparently, the French Canadians, too. 

Apparently, they're serious about their champagne. It had better be actual champagne. Lol. 

 

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I refuse to call it champagne. Considering it was invented by the English, calling it "champagne" would be like calling a pork pie a "Languedoc-Rousillon."

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2 hours ago, Black Monk said:

I refuse to call it champagne. Considering it was invented by the English, calling it "champagne" would be like calling a pork pie a "Languedoc-Rousillon."

Regardless of who claims the fame, the stuff still has to be made with grapes from the Champagne region, so what's the bother about calling it champagne? Does that really give it to the French? 

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40 minutes ago, ChaosRose said:

Regardless of who claims the fame, the stuff still has to be made with grapes from the Champagne region, so what's the bother about calling it champagne? Does that really give it to the French? 

And therein lies the problem - the French wrongly claiming something as their own.

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3 minutes ago, Black Monk said:

And therein lies the problem - the French wrongly claiming something as their own.

Looks like there are contributions from both sides. They have the special grapes and started with the first process, then you guys created the second process. 

Can't you just get along and enjoy some, together? 

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11 minutes ago, ChaosRose said:

Looks like there are contributions from both sides. They have the special grapes and started with the first process, then you guys created the second process. 

Can't you just get along and enjoy some, together? 

It was a 17th century cider maker from Gloucester who first came up with the idea of champagne.

Christopher Merrett not only devi­sed the method of fermentation which gives champagne its sparkle.He also invented the stronger glass needed to stop the bottles exploding under pressure.

Merrett delivered a paper to the Royal Society in London in 1632 setting out his discovery. And that was six years before Dom Perignon, the French monk generally credited with inventing champagne, was even born.

The first champagne house was not founded in France until 1729 – almost 100 years after Merrett published his ideas.

 

Edited by Black Monk
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I'm finding this on the champagne wiki page...

The oldest recorded sparkling wine is Blanquette de Limoux, which was apparently invented by Benedictine Monks in the Abbey of Saint-Hilaire, near Carcassonne in 1531.

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19 hours ago, ChaosRose said:

I'm finding this on the champagne wiki page...

The oldest recorded sparkling wine is Blanquette de Limoux, which was apparently invented by Benedictine Monks in the Abbey of Saint-Hilaire, near Carcassonne in 1531.

Rubbish. The Romans and Ancient Greeks noted effervescence in wine. What we now call champagne was invented by the English - even having corks in wine bottles is an English innovation.

Quote

The English were the first to see the tendency of wines to sparkle as a desirable trait and tried to understand why it produced bubbles. Wine was often transported to England in wooden wine barrels where merchant houses would then bottle the wine for sale. During the 17th century, English glass production used coal-fuelled ovens and produced stronger, more durable glass bottles than the wood-fired French glass. The English also rediscovered the use of cork stoppers, once used by the Romans but forgotten for centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. During the cold winters of the Champagne region, temperatures would drop so low that the fermentation process was prematurely halted—leaving some residual and dormant yeast. When the wine was shipped to and bottled in England, the fermentation process would restart when the weather warmed and the cork-stoppered wine would begin to build pressure from carbon dioxide gas. When the wine was opened, it would be bubbly. In 1662, the English scientist Christopher Merrett presented a paper detailing how the presence of sugar in a wine led to it eventually sparkling and that by adding sugar to a wine before bottling it, nearly any wine could be made to sparkle. This is one of the first known accounts of understanding the process of sparkling wine and even suggests that English merchants were producing "sparkling Champagne" before the French Champenois were deliberately making it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Champagne

 

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False advertising is false advertising.

It's a petty lawsuit but the airline shouldn't make promises it does not keep

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Sounds like you're really attached to your sparkling wine. 

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Just now, spartan max2 said:

False advertising is false advertising.

It's a petty lawsuit but the airline shouldn't make promises it does not keep

Yeah, I have to agree. It's not like the guy is a beggar on the street.

He paid for champagne service, so he should have gotten it. 

I know some people just use champagne as a generic term for sparkling wine, but there are some places where it is illegal to make the claim if it isn't actual champagne. 

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Oh gosh, and the Italians have their own special sparkling wine too.

I'm kind of wondering how this guy knew it wasn't champagne, but rather a cheaper bubbly. There's some pretty cheap champagnes on the market- and some other sparkling wines that are much more expensive than the cheapest champagne.

 

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1 minute ago, rashore said:

Oh gosh, and the Italians have their own special sparkling wine too.

I'm kind of wondering how this guy knew it wasn't champagne, but rather a cheaper bubbly. There's some pretty cheap champagnes on the market- and some other sparkling wines that are much more expensive than the cheapest champagne.

 

Probably saw the bottle. 

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However you slice it, it's a bait and switch.

They advertised the expensive stuff and then delivered the cheaper stuff. 

So they now have to change their advertising to reflect what they're actually serving.

I agree that should have happened. 

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Judge Likely Guy hereby orders that Sunwing airlines (the defendant) buy Daniel MacDuff (the plaintiff) a bottle of real champagne and that said Mr. MacDuff stop whining.

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One of the most common "food scams."

Technically, champagne isn't champagne unless it comes from Champagne; anything else is sparkling wine. A lot of folks use the term interchangeably, but there are a lot of people who take things like that pretty seriously. It's sort of like ordering Kobe beef but being served Wagyu. 

Still not exactly a news story, though...

EDIT: Looks like it was a misunderstanding on the customer's part.

Edited by Not Your Huckleberry
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