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The Royal Douglas and King Arthur prohibited brands of South Africa.
- South African makers of “whiskey-flavored spirits”, vodka with caramel coloring, tried to appeal the ban on brands such as Royal Douglas and King Arthur.
- In a battle with the Scotch Whiskey Association, SA, the Milestone company argued, among other things, that the taste of whiskey cannot be defined.
- The Supreme Court of Appeals believes that South Africans may have been tricked into buying what they thought was whiskey, and has tightened the ban on the operation.
- For more stories, visit www.BusinessInsider.co.za.
A lengthy fight between a local producer of caramel-colored vodka disguised as whiskey and the guardians of Scottish tradition has once again seen a banned South African company attempt to intimate a link with Scotland, this time in the Supreme Court of Appeals.
Local company Milestone Beverage, which sells “Afrolicious” vodka and “Premier” gin, was told to destroy all material that is “reminiscent of Scottish origin” or otherwise.
That company had attempted to appeal a similar higher court ruling that the Scotch Whiskey Association had held as evidence of SA’s strong legal protections.
Like the high court, the Supreme Court of Appeals was unimpressed by the sometimes peculiar arguments Milestone offered, including the fact that while he was selling what he called a whiskey-flavored drink, there really was no such thing.
Since taste is subjective, Milestone said, it is impossible to “pinpoint when a product will be considered to have a whiskey flavor.”
Taken to its logical conclusion, the Supreme Court said, that argument would allow the company to put whatever it wanted in a bottle and call it whiskey.
Actually, in the bottle there was vodka, with artificial caramel coloring, which according to the evidence of the experts of the Scotch Whiskey Association could say that it tastes like apple, orange and other fruits, but nothing like whiskey, that the association maintains that it has a definite and undeniable flavor. that can be defined.
However, the exterior of the bottle offered something different.
Older versions of the Milestone brand banned for their flavored alcoholic beverages.
“The first impression on a customer who stops by a liquor store will probably be that each product is a whiskey,” the SCA said, even after Milestone discarded tartan as part of a design and made other minor adjustments to its brand.
Milestone claimed that one of its brands, Royal Douglas, was named after a grandfather of its controlling family, Douglas Haupt. He did not explain where another brand in his stable, King Arthur, had come from or the caramel color of his vodka, or why he had looked for Scottish images instead of Russian in his designs.
The company had also offered a “Jennesons” brand and one called “Mills.”
The drinks were sold for about a third of the price of the major whiskey brands, at one point with a large “whiskey” on the label, followed by a much smaller “flavored liquor”.
(Compiled by Phillip de Wet)
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