WA distiller threatened over 'Pisco' spirit range

When Harmans Estate winemaker Greg Garnish decided to call his new distilled spirit range 'Pisco', he never imagined the decision would result in a legal dispute with Peru and Chile.

Garnish has found himself in hot water over the name of his new spirit range: Margaret River Pisco.

Both Chile and Peru claim Pisco as their national drink and both argue they invented it over 500 years ago. There's even a place called Pisco in both Peru and Chile, and the countries have been in a legal battle over that for 50 years.

Source: Today Tonight. 

When Garnish produced his own version of the popular spirit and named after the South American favourite, it caused international havoc.

In media coverage of the issue in Peru and Chile, Mr Garnish is referred to as “Gringo Greg” and accused of “stealing our national drink”.

“We are copping a little bit of flak from the South Americans, particularly Peru,” Garnish told Today Tonight.

“A few death threats, which was quite interesting.”

The battle has now gone even further than just threats, as Peru has officially launched a legal challenge in an effort to stop Harmans using the word Pisco.

“Peru have objected to our trademark and are making a lot of noise about us misleading the public with regards to what Pisco is”, Garnish said.

“Pisco is in our opinion just a style of drink, being a distilled wine.

“Champagne is made in Campaign; it’s been made there for thousands of years, and Port is made in port. These things have definitive areas and styles of production but with Pisco, it’s made in Chile, it’s made in Peru, it’s made in Bolivia, so there is no single point of origin for it,” Garnish defended on Today Tonight.

The Australia Peru Chamber of Commerce states: “We think it is wise for Harman to think of a new unique name for their wine spirit, for this is not a true Pisco.”

However Garnish remains optimistic.

“I’m not worried. We are really just at the start of our Pisco project and we will just see where it takes us.”

Second international dispute in three months

Pisco isn’t the only spirit that's been battled over across the seas in recent months. Back in June, the Tequila Regulatory Council (TRC) threatened Heineken with legal action for using the word ‘tequila’ on its Desperados beer labels.

The TRC believes Desperados violates its regulations, which state that to use the word 'tequila’, a beverage must contain a significant quantity of the spirit and that the beer doesn’t actually contain tequila.

“We cannot permit someone unscrupulously to affect Tequila’s prestige,” Ramón González, CRT director-general told the Financial Times. “Either they take the word tequila off it, or they put some tequila in.” If they refuse, “we’ll have no choice but to fight this [in court]”.

However, Heineken refuted the TRC claims in a statement, saying: “The flavouring we use contains genuine tequila which we buy in Mexico from one of the members of the [Tequila Regulatory Council].”

If you love your Desperados, we will report on the outcome of the legal battle here, so follow this space.