The only French mustard that has a legal certification (an "IGP", meaning "Certified Geographic Origin") is the "Moutarde de Bourgogne". It's made with wine while the Dijon mustard uses vinegar. And the latter (Dijon's recipe) imports most of the mustard seeds used in its mustard, while the "Moutarde de Bourgogne" has to use locally produced seeds.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moutarde_de_Bourgogne
By the way, mustard was a very important condiment in France for many centuries. But out of the 8 French idioms listed in a 150 years old dictionary, only one is still used nowadays.
https://www.littre.org/definition/moutarde
I think it would require a lot of work to show that megacorp scaling was an essential part of any process that led us to 8 billion, as opposed to just part of the process that was used.
> The Haber process,[1] also called the Haber–Bosch process, is an artificial nitrogen fixation process and is the main industrial procedure for the production of ammonia today.
> Nearly 50% of the nitrogen found in human tissues originated from the Haber–Bosch process.[59] Thus, the Haber process serves as the "detonator of the population explosion", enabling the global population to increase from 1.6 billion in 1900 to 7.7 billion by November 2018.[60]
"It could have happened some other way" is a non-falsifiable statement. Therefore, it's not really that interesting to talk about. I counter with "It could have happened some other way" with "Prove it."
I don't think that's true - imagine for example we'd run out of oxygen, and had needed to manufacture (extract) it somehow on a large scale to support a growing population: we could falsify it by saying 'no, it was necessary to produce more oxygen than was naturally available'. If we can't find any such way to falsify it, then the point stands.
Your example is not the same. The argument isn’t whether or not producing nitrogen is necessary. The question is whether how we produce nitrogen is necessary or if there is an alternative.
Using your example, it’d be like if we produced oxygen using process X and then saying “process X was necessary to save the species because we would have run out of natural oxygen.” And someone saying “Not necessarily because process X might not be the only way to produce oxygen.”
the original statement implied it couldn't have happened some other way (gotten to population of 8 billion without megacorps), to which I essentially replied "Prove it"
If your reply to my "prove it" is also "prove it" then it would seem we are at an impasse.
> the original statement implied it couldn't have happened some other way (gotten to population of 8 billion without megacorps), to which I essentially replied "Prove it"
The statement is more-or-less obvious if you think about it from a capitalistic economic system. If there was a cheaper way to fix nitrogen, then someone would be using it to undercut Haber-Bosch produced nitrogen and capture the market. So we can conclude that, given scientific knowledge acquired by this point in time, Haber-Bosch is the cheapest way to produce nitrogen. Given that the amount of food that can be produced is a function of the price of the inputs, we couldn't produce as much food if nitrogen was more expensive. If we couldn't produce as much food, then we couldn't support the current population. So, on the balance of probabilities, the statement is self-evident.
>The statement is more-or-less obvious if you think about it from a capitalistic economic system. If there was a cheaper way to fix nitrogen, then someone would be using it to undercut Haber-Bosch produced nitrogen and capture the market.
Haber-Bosch is offered as an example of something needing megacorp scaling to that original statement, obviously from reading the foregoing I never said anything about a replacement for Haber-Bosch.
My admittedly vague statement just meant that hey you need to at least come with a theory as to why whatever allowed us to get to 8 billion could not happen without megacorp scaling. I don't think a linke to Haber-Bosch is an argument for that - the process was developed without megacorp financing as I understood it and then sold to a large corporation (not really megacorp either I think, by normal understanding)
quote: "The process was purchased by the German chemical company BASF, which assigned Carl Bosch the task of scaling up Haber's tabletop machine to industrial-level production"
I suppose the idea is that megacorp needed to run or develop scaling to industrial-level production.
I'm not that averse to the idea, just it seemed in the original form (linked above) quite a bold statement that should at least have some theoretical backing.
Megacorp scaling is all about economies of scale. The connection between economies of scale, lower cost, and high production are all well understood. We can fix more nitrogen, for less money, and produce more food.
Without megacorp scaling, we'd need to spend more money on the same amount of food. Is that possible? Or would a different equilibrium point have been reached? Say, 7 billion instead of 8?
The contention presumably comes from the position of believing that all of these industrial processes and economies of scale could be implemented as well or better by a centralized command economy. You would think that the 20th century debunked such notions, but commies never learn... ...err I mean, true communism has never been tried!
> If there was a cheaper way to fix nitrogen, then someone would be using it to undercut Haber-Bosch produced nitrogen and capture the market.
Unless parts of a capitalist economic system undermines competition in the interest of maximising profits for individual corporations or sectors. Thus there is a fork in this chain of reasoning -- it is not necessarily the case that no alternative method can be found (whether fixing nitrogen specifically or producing food generally), it could also be that such methods aren't developed because they threaten the short-term return on capital. One way to think of capitalism is as an engine optimised to generate and preserve short-term returns on capital.
'Cheapest' is defined in part by the required short-term return on capital. Nothing could be cheaper, from an operational perspective, than letting fields lie fallow. It only becomes expensive when fixed capital absolutely must have its short-term return before any other considerations are taken into account.
Maybe, but industrial processes are changed and made more efficient all the time. Nitrogen is a commodity. Anyone with hydrogen can make it. There's no global cartel forcing everyone to use this specific process.
Arguably there is. The large, multinational, powerful conglomerates that run the fertilizer industry have undoubtedly achieved regulatory capture, and gotten government support to keep upstarts out of the market through onerous safety regulations. Fertilizer explodes, so some of those regulations are even safety related!
Ok. What would a proof of the negative statement look like? I.e. how could you prove Haber-Bosch is the only way of producing nitrogen at scale given what was known in the 20th century?
In this circumstance it might be difficult, but to say there is no way to disprove such a statement is facially absurd. It might be true that there are no other alternatives. It absolutely depends on the circumstance.
It's like asking is there a different way for me to get to work. Either there is or isn't. It's not an infinite universe of probabilities.
Even if the universe of possibilities is not infinite, that doesn't necessarily mean it's possible to know when you know everything, which would be a prerequisite to proving such a statement. And of course, knowing everything is totally infeasible, so you couldn't prove such a statement in practice anyway, even if it were theoretically possible to do so.
I mean, I'd think we were talking more reasonably than that but if you want to turn it into some sort of philosophical question not bound by the physics of our universe, go right ahead...
Is that exclusively only manufacturable by multi-billion dollar mega corps? Is it impossible for every region of 10 million people to manufacture their own?
I don't believe that's the question being asked. Rather they are asking whether the process was/is only viable with the support of a megacorp? Could this same process not be just as effectively used by smaller geographically distributed facilities run separate orgs or corps?
That is plausible. It depends what you mean by "megacorp." If what we mean (in contrast to artisanal craftsmanship) is just industrial scale operations - then yes, we certainly can organize industrialization differently than megacorps. Smaller sized corps, State-owned enterprises, co-ops, federated mutualism, and more, are all possibilities. But if the suggestion is that we could support modern population levels with just traditional production methods - that probably is unlikely. To steelman the argument, maybe proponent could suggest something like advanced permaculture. I'm skeptical that would work, but something along those lines is a possibility.
Isn't that just the result of having heavily used this process?
This can indeed be a consequence (although I do find the source of the wikipedia article really light without a proper study to support the claim) but it doesn't mean that this is a necessity. It could just be a result of a transition of societies relying a lot on animals, so having a lot of fertilizer as a byproduct, to a mechanize society needing to find an alternative for fertilizing.
Livestock was and is used to convert plants humans can't eat into milk and meat that we can. Even modern grass-finished beef is raised mostly eating grasses. Grains are really expensive compared to some grass growing in a field. I don't understand why people think it would be even close to economical for a rancher to raise an animal over 1000 pounds on grain alone. That beef would be more expensive than any wagyu.
Although highly depending where, there definitely was. You can read about it in the Parisian farmers practice in the 19th century for example (not sure there's much material in English though)
Because that is what it boils down to, either low class people from your society are chosen or some other people over there.
With the other people over there, good luck! because they sure as hell don't want to stop living.
As for your own lower class, good luck! because they already see that the people in charge are massive hypocrites(i.e. in order to stop climate change we need to reduce air travel! Oh but we all need to take private jets to the conference in Egypt...but our work there will more than make up for the carbon we use...)
No, it takes: universal access to contraceptives and developed economy. That's it. Global population growth is projected to stagnate in 100 years - it's happening, just a question of whether it's sooner rather than later.
The problem isn't the Africans with a ridiculously small environmental footprint. The problem is with moguls such as Bill Gates constantly flying in private jet, having more impact each day than an African over their whole life.
They only have a ridiculously small environmental footprint until they end up moving to the 1st world. And they aren't moving to consume less. Immigration is pegged as a matter of policy to boost consumption, and increase wealth for the wealthy. The fertility rate in the 1st world is stagnant - immigration is the reason the population grows.
Emissions rise because of demand, and for the past 20 years, that demand has been a result of rising economies (e.g. China), and to a lesser extent growth in the Western world (through immigration). Emissions will keep rising until that quells. Fortunately, it's projected to in 100 years or so, but ending that sooner is possible and warranted. We can achieve this with universal access to contraceptives, and by lifting countries out of poverty more rapidly.
It's important to note that Bill Gate's view is that population reduction should be done by lifting the world's women out of poverty and giving everyone easy access to birth control methods. This is decidedly less gross than the typical "we have too many people" take. In fact, Bill's take can be valid even if you believe the earth can support billions of more people sustainably.
He also flies around in private jets (to this day, not only 20 years ago!) while scolding common people for owning cars. The logic of these rich fucks is something along the lines of "there are few rich people, so rich people polluting doesn't matter. There are lots of poor people, so poor people polluting matters a lot."
Rules for thee, not for me. Money is privilege and they think this puts them above the standards they wish to impose on others.
Yeah I guess, if you don't care about sustainability, pollution, the old vs young ratio (which brings societal issues such as retirement, healthcare, old age care), destruction of natural habitat, &c.
The "no rules" mindset is exactly what brought us in this position. We could be 30b actually, maybe more, there are no hard limits if you discard every variables...
The old vs young ratio is only a problem when you have fewer kids than previous generations. Which is why it is now being used as an argument for immigration.
Maybe it's violates another rule we like, and we can't keep both. If we posit that it's a positive thing that anyone in the world have unrestricted capacity to own a home, vehicle, pursue happiness and basically make use of resources as a Westerner does, then keeping the number lean could respect that - if the resource extraction, land encroachment and other externalities from demand become a problem at scale.
The fantasy from the greens is that Westerners are "consuming more and more". Really, there are just more people consuming.
Yes. Economies of scale is a large reason behind how we can feed 8 billion people where we had half a billion before the Industrial Revolution (the other is probably petroleum). Countries where land reforms consolidated arable land into large industrialized plots are far more productive than countries where the land is fragmented, all ecological and social considerations aside.
Economy of scale helps only up to a point. A medium size company likely will be be more efficient than a small one, but a big corp only marginally more efficient. A big company can even be less efficient because of internal bureaucracy and difficulties in scaling management. The scale when it is no longer beneficial to increase size depends on the industry and can vary a lot.
Always interested in claims like this. I'm not remotely trying to falsify or even challenge the claim, but given modern times, a lot of what Facebook has built has now been offloaded to open source packages, some of which have sprung up startups in the "${x} as a service" mold, meaning that those measurements on things like "headcount" get fuzzier.
I'm confident that I could build a social network that scales with a 3 person team. In fact, I've done it before, but it relied on hosting and data providers and frontend frameworks and languages that I definitely could not have developed the entirety of as a 2-person team.
Do those factor into the count, or are we in the "if you do everything yourself, a cup of coffee actually costs $300,000?" At what point does labor specialization come into play? Because there's the guy who does everything "from scratch" and realizes exorbitant costs for small things, and on the other end of the spectrum is the guy who started a profitable coffee company with $1800 of seed capital, down to the practical reality of the median cup of drip coffee, brewed at home, costs approximately $0.30.
What are you presuming with a "medium-sized" company? Modern financing might very well allow a company big enough to operate only a single factory, to invest in new technologies, or to purchase them from specialized firms doing innovative research.
Similarly, sure a 5-dev team probably couldn't build and operate the full-scope of FB (unlike the clone someone could build in a weekend that doesn't take into account hundreds of small capabilities) - but maybe a 500-dev group could, rather than needing 5000-devs. Especially with a narrower focus on scope and outsourcing various problems (such as do they need to operate their own video hosting platform vs partnering).
There are advantages to scale, but also costs, and at a certain point scale tends to be horizontal rather than vertical. More products/features/adjacencies that now need to be coordinated, rather than a solid core and leverging the market for the rest.
Depends on the cost of said factory, me thinks. Concretely, we don't see all that much competition in the IC manufacturing market because fabs are so stupidly expensive. Hence TSMC's dominance of that industry.
If that were really true then wouldn't most theories about the USSR's economy be wrong? You can't have it both ways...
Isn't the claim that decentralized free trade facilitated by delegation is more efficient? If not, I think we need a new theory of why the USSR failed as there seems to be a contradiction here.
The USSR was typically very efficient in keeping the authoritarian figurehead in power for long periods of time, not doing anything useful for the average person. The fitness function of attempting to keep an authoritarian leader in power for long periods of time typically fails as it's inefficient, but that doesn't mean such systems cannot last for long periods of time in the right environment.
The USSR failed because it's only purpose was to enrich and empower the single leader. That's why Lenin sticking around wouldn't have actually improved things, either for the USSR or communism in general. He still believed murdering large swathes of the population for "the good of communism" (read "Whatever I like"). In Russia, turns out large portions of the populace can be stolen from, murdered, oppressed, starved, etc without a danger to the god emperor.
Any system, bureaucracy, TTRPG ruleset, etc that prioritizes a single figure over the whole will inevitably erode the value the whole produces in favor of empowering the single figure. It's a matter of accountability. In a single figure system, the only accountability is to the single figure's personal whims.
We could still feed them before, the difference being not everyone had access to the latest goodies, which by the way many still don't as the Industrial Revolution isn't evenly distributed.
Human population is a function of the species' calorific output. We can produce at least 16 times more calories on aggregate than we did 500 hundred years ago.
What is it, actually? It seems like humans are complex animals and we achieve equilibrium in different ways than many others. Japan's population isn't shrinking due to a shortage of calories or surplus of predators (thankfully!)
> Just like it is in many parts of the world today.
It's not true, despite population increase number of people dying of starvation goes down https://sites.tufts.edu/wpf/famine/ the reason of starvation in modern times is political, not production shortage.
So in all the thousand years mankind has been around we had to wait for the 1800 to be rescued from all famine waves, yet 3 centuries, a large portion of countries still hasn't managed to have been saved from such trends.
How many farming fields and insects have been destroyed with chemicals and genetic modifications from that wonderfull revolution?
Depends why you think those regulations were enacted, but once school of thought is those megacorps made food in dirty disgusting factories and only cleaned up due to government regulation, but that family friendly small businesses would not have cut those same corners and we'd not need those regulations without megacorps.
There's another school of thought that believes in regulatory capture and says those regulations are there to make it harder for someone to compete in the market, and that safety is further down the list than making money is.
hard to tell. megacorps tend to get tax breaks and have political influence small businesses could never dream of. the playing field is tilted in their favour.
Here’s a thought - before the advent of modern fertiliser and high yield seeds we simply could not feed everyone. Famine was common, and when it struck people died. This is one of the many things that kept the population in check. Where do you expect to get your fertiliser from? Your local artisanal fertiliser maker? Perhaps you think you’ll go old school and use human refuse, despite it having much less nitrogen content than ammonia based ones?
People want to live in well built homes that are warm in winter and cool in summer. Do you know of a way to build that without concrete and steel? Assuming you don’t, where will you get your concrete and steel from? Your local steelsmith, forging one steel ingot at a time?
And fertiliser, concrete and steel - those can’t be made without fossil fuels. Where do you propose to get those? You’ll head down to the local coal mine whenever you need some?
Society cannot function without these materials. These materials are produced at scale, at high efficiency thanks to the megacorps mentioned previously. If there was an artificial limit on the size of corps, they would not be able to achieve the scale needed to make this economical. Food and housing would be scarce.
Lastly, calling someone a serf breaks HN guidelines. If you’re going to condescend to someone, at least don’t do it when your statement is so stunningly wrong.
You leave no room for small to medium sized businesses? Your position is that in order to have fertilizer, you have to have mega corporations?
> where will you get your concrete and steel from?
I get my concrete from a business down the street. They buy materials, mix it locally, and deliver it for me. No mega corporations needed.
Steel? In what context? Raw mineral? Refined ingots? Manufactured products? You're confusing an entire supply chain for a single entity.
> Where do you propose to get those?
The ground. Or, again, do you suppose that only three companies in the world can possibly do this? How do you account for the massive mergers and acquisitions in this space over the past few decades? Those were necessary to continue pumping liquid out of the ground?
> These materials are produced at scale, at high efficiency thanks to the megacorps mentioned previously.
Those materials will be produced at scale because there are enough mines to do it. You still haven't made a cogent case as to why megacorporations are more efficient or are required for this to happen.
> calling someone a serf breaks HN guidelines.
And you'll notice I didn't do that. I said it displays a certain type of mentality. Did you listen, or did you rush to be offended?
> at least don’t do it when your statement is so stunningly wrong.
Again.. it's a _very_ simple question: Can you make the case that mega corporations were necessary or that they actually are more efficient? You have completely failed to do that here.
Economies of scale exist. Once those economies of scale lower prices, they allow previously nonexistent commerce to now become viable.
Larger firms will benefit more from economies of scale than relatively smaller firms, meaning their products and services will be cheaper. For most of the major products I mentioned, scale matters. All of those are dominated by large corporations thanks to the economies of scale.
That's one side. The other side is finance - certain processes are only viable with large capital expenditure, which only large companies can manage. For example, setting up a semiconductor foundry at the leading edge needs tens of billions of dollars of investment. Setting up a resource extraction operation would be cheaper but still require tens to hundreds of millions.
You seem to love the idea that a small firm can do anything. Great. Go out and do it, prove me wrong. Why don't you try to set up an artisanal semiconductor foundry? The day your company (or any small company) manages to compete with TSMC on price and process node, I'll eat my hat.
But if you can only talk the talk and not walk the walk, don't bother responding.
If you are on this site complaining about the resource and pollution crisis, you are part of that crisis and likely making a very hypocritical argument.
"Last mustard-maker in Dijon"; does Bornier not count due to some kind of jurisdictional issue? It's labeled as "Made in Dijon, France" but perhaps this is a state vs. city thing.
It's written « Made in Dijon Region », not « Made in Dijon ». I'm not sure what they mean by Region in english, but in French, the « région » of Dijon is « Burgundy Franche-Comté », which is obviously way bigger than Dijon.
Also, this is partly why there is a « Moutarde de Bourgogne » appellation d'origine contrôlée, which means the mustard was actually made in Burgundy, because « Moutarde de Dijon » is a way of doing mustard, not an origin statement.
There is also "Arrondissement de Dijon" which includes lands >40km north of Dijon city center. But despite Bornier being only 8.3km south of the center of Dijon city, it is also a mere 0.75km south of the border of the "Arrondissement de Dijon", putting it in the "Arrondissement de Beaune". That's the same as the primary manufacturing facilities for the brand in this article, Edmond Fallot, although Bornier doesn't have a secondary artisan-production storefront in Dijon.
As for "what they mean by Region in English"...Americans would have no idea what they mean either. Our country doesn't really have much in the way of "geographical" boundaries for the production of certain products...it's fine to label and sell a "Wisconsin Sharp Cheddar (made in Texas)". Or a "Bourbon Whiskey" made in Colorado. Words on labels are generally pretty meaningless here.
But generally Americans who buy higher-end European foodstuffs expect Europe to have strict controls on what's allowed to be called what on a label exported from the EU. For example, although quite a few American sparkling wines can still be labeled "Champagne"[0], generally we'd expect that anything imported from the EU that is labeled "Champagne" would come from the appropriate regions as expected by the laws in Europe. Similar story with various cheeses that are typically stamped with D.O.P. / A.O.P. / P.D.O. -- if an Idiazábal is imported from the EU, I know it's from Basque/Navarre and produced according to traditional methods. If it's American-made Idiazábal ... I have no fucking clue how it was made or if it will taste anything like a real Idiazábal: Maybe it will be perfect, or maybe it will be completely wrong.
So in this case, as an American browsing high-end groceries, I figured "Dijon Moutarde" would be an "appellation d'origine contrôlée" but I am mildly surprised to find out that it is not, and that I should look for "Moutarde de Bourgogne" instead.
> But generally Americans who buy higher-end European foodstuffs expect Europe to have strict controls on what's allowed to be called what on a label exported from the EU.
It is still largely political.
As a french guy who lived half his life in Switzerland, I find it a disgrace that french and us companies are allowed to make and sell some tasteless cheese called gruyere and emmental when they are not originating from Gruyères (a Swiss village and area) or the valley of Emmen (again in Switzerland).
If you want a similar french cheese you should look for Comté (not the same flavor as Gruyère AOC but also very tasty), otherwise eat the real deal, and a matured (at least 12 months) Gruyère AOC from Switzerland. If you want variety there is a whole load of other really nice swiss and french cheeses that tastes very good and do not steal someone else's name. Special mention to l'Etivaz.
> I find it a disgrace that french and us companies are allowed to make and sell some tasteless cheese called gruyere and emmental when they are not originating from Gruyères (a Swiss village and area) or the valley of Emmen (again in Switzerland).
Is the true problem where the cheese originates from, or the lack of taste?
Personally, I only care about the latter: if the same taste can be achieved by following the same methods (example below: Kentucky Bourbon), the origin is irrelevant to me and my tastebuds.
> Is the true problem where the cheese originates from, or the lack of taste?
I would say both if the name comes from a specific place.
I mentionned the Comté earlier. It is made with the same methods as the Gruyère, from Milk of same or similar cows, all pertaining of the same families. Both taste very good yet you can't mistake one for another. The only difference is where the cows live and some difference in cows race repartition in the respective area. Mostly Montbéliardes and Simmental in Franche-Comté, more Holsteins and Red-Holsteins in Gruyère.
The same taste should be achievable by following the same method - so if we consider the cow breed as part of the method here (I don't know much about cows TBH) would the origin still matter to you?
I don't think it is true. Subtle varieties in climate, soil also make a difference.
Take Wines for example. There are great wines from different part of the worlds using the exact same grape varieties, same wine barrels and corks origin. Yet while there are common characteristics the properties of the end product vary through climates and soil differences.
I think it is more sane to have great wines from NAPA, Baja California, Chile, Italia, Australia or Burgundy in France or whatever having their own names. Calling them all Bordeaux would harm both the Bordeaux producers and that great wineyard in Valle de Guadalupe that deserve its own notoriety and pride.
> I find it a disgrace that french and us companies are allowed to make and sell some tasteless cheese called gruyere and emmental when they are not originating from Gruyères (a Swiss village and area) or the valley of Emmen (again in Switzerland).
Same goes for brie, camembert, feta, mozzarella, ... The "real" thing is as great as the fakes are terrible.
> So in this case, as an American browsing high-end groceries, I figured "Dijon Moutarde" would be an "appellation d'origine contrôlée" but I am mildly surprised to find out that it is not, and that I should look for "Moutarde de Bourgogne" instead.
I'm French and I can attest that my friends didn't know that [AOC for mustard is "Moutarde de Bourgogne" not "Dijon"] before I learned it a few years ago (well into adulthood) and told them about it. I think it's one of the few cases like that where the AOC doesn't match the intuition.
> Our country doesn't really have much in the way of "geographical" boundaries for the production of certain products...it's fine to label and sell a "Wisconsin Sharp Cheddar (made in Texas)". Or a "Bourbon Whiskey" made in Colorado. Words on labels are generally pretty meaningless here.
That’s not quite true. While it is rarer, mostly because the US doesn’t have nearly the regional history of Europe and because it generally takes a more libertarian approach on production, there is a legal protection system for regional items (Protected Geographical Indicator, PGI). One example (that’s also registered as an EU PDO) is “Napa” or “Napa Valley” for wines. It also applies for Vidalia Onions, Florida Oranges, Idaho Potatoes, Humboldt Fog and (ironic, as it’s counter to your example) Kentucky Bourbon; however, I don’t believe those are also registered PDOs.
As to Champagne, there was a long while that the US simply refused to acknowledge PDOs (again, because of the more laissez-faire/free commerce attitude) and many “American Champagnes” were produced before PDO was even a legal framework in the EU (1992). For that reason, it’s still a flimsy PGI in the US. That being said, as many winemakers in California are now selling in Europe, given its increased prestige in the wine community, many of them have chosen to rebrand as “Sparkling Wine” of their own accord.
> (ironic, as it’s counter to your example) Kentucky Bourbon
I'm aware of this and was hoping someone else would elaborate on labeling laws in the USA. You've done a fantastic job with these examples, most of which I never knew about!
Just as a counter-counter-example to kick things off, here is whiskey labeled Bourbon made in Colorado[0]. Here are the actual laws on Bourbon[1]. Also of note is the rather more restrictive "Bottled-in-bond Bourbon" laws[2].
Still, I didn't know the USA had any actual state-restricted labels. Idaho potatoes are a hell of a discovery for me...I had no idea that Idaho potatoes were "Russet potatoes from the state of Idaho".
I think that "Bottled in Bond" is little more than a marketing gimmick now. The kind of distillery that a consumer would want this guarantee from is not going to go to the expense of doing so. The kind of distillery that would participate is already of high quality and does not need that kind of guarantee.
Bourbon is required to be aged in a brand-new oak barrel. A long time ago this may have been a big expense for a distillery, but now the secondhand market for those barrels is so high that a distillery gets a lot of revenue from selling their used barrels to other alcohol producers. They are in high demand, especially for export to Europe!
Alcohol producers, distillers included, are now very welcoming of visitors and offer tours and other tourism-related activities. It is a lot easier for a consumer to verify the quality of a product now than it used to be. If you want your own barrel of bourbon, a lot of places will do that for you. I've got a family member that helps run a distillery in Michigan that hosts special events such as weddings. The bride and groom get a smaller barrel as a wedding favor, placed in the venue for all guests to sign and write messages on, etc. The barrel is filled and aged in the warehouse, to be bottled on a future anniversary date, with the bottles and the empty barrel then delivered to the couple years later. They can even participate in the distilling process if they wish, or visit during the aging process to see their barrel in the warehouse, etc.
> Just as a counter-counter-example to kick things off, here is whiskey labeled Bourbon made in Colorado[0]. Here are the actual laws on Bourbon[1]. Also of note is the rather more restrictive "Bottled-in-bond Bourbon" laws[2].
Notice how it’s labeled “Bourbon” and not “Kentucky Bourbon”.
It might(?) not be illegal to label sparkling wine made in california as such, but I don't believe I've ever seen labeled as such. It is not uncommon to see "method traditionale champagne" or similar in smaller print somewhere on a bottle of California Sparkling though, but it's not part of the primary labeling. We've been buying cali sparkling and french champagne on the semi-regular for a couple of years now and I've only seen french wines use/claim the title of Champagne. Mumm Napa makes fantastic sparkling wine though, and is widely available all over northern california for $20-22/bottle in several varieties.
Sure, it's labeled "California Champagne" but the vast majority of consumers in the USA who are buying for NYE probably don't know that means its "not actual Champagne".
I started buying this mustard from my local grocery store a few years back and I've been really impressed. I never really "got" the French mustard thing before and tended to prefer German-style mustard. This stuff is delicious. Comes in very small jars and isn't always available, though (right now all I can find is Maille).
"Moutarde de Meaux" (or "Moutarde à l'ancienne"), a mustard done the old way. One of the best producer is Pommery:
https://www.moutarde-de-meaux.com/pommery
"Moutarde de Normandie", the same than the above but with cider vinegar:
https://toustain-barville.com/3-moutardes
"Moutarde violette de Brive", yep! it's purple:
https://www.denoix.com/moutarde-violette
"Moutarde à la Violette", this one is not purple, but do include extract of violet flower:
https://www.lamaisondelaviolette.com/fr/epicerie-salee/101-m...