“Our village is first mentioned in a document from Feb. 15, 885, in a transaction between the Emperor Charles the Fat and a local governor,” said Albert Banderet, the former mayor, who grew grapes until he entered public administration, leaving the vineyards to his son.  Recently, the local people have organized demonstrations to draw attention to their plight. Earlier this month, they used a forklift to rip up a road sign bearing the name Champagne at the village entrance, to which they affixed a French flag and a bottle of French Champagne. Swiss-style, they carefully replanted the sign after the demonstration.  “Our goal is not to be the bin Ladens of wine, to be terrorists or ideologues,” Mr. Banderet, 59, said, “but wine is a reality here.” His son cultivates 70 acres of grapes, compared with 79,000 acres given over to the production of Champagne in France.  The French say they are struggling to protect an Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, or A.O.C., a convoluted certification that authenticates the content, method and origin of a French agricultural product.  “Yves Saint Laurent came along in 1993 or 1994 and wanted to introduce a Champagne perfume, and before that a tobacco company wanted a cigarette called Champagne,” said Daniel Lorson, spokesman for the Interprofessional Committee of the Wines of Champagne, a trade group in Épernay, France.  Harrods, the London department store, sold a mineral water called Champagne a few years ago, at $20 a bottle, Mr. Lorson said by telephone. “You put our name on it, and it’s worth $20.”  “Why is it worth so much to us?” Mr. Lorson asked. “To prevent it from becoming a generic name, on yogurt or toothpaste, and lose its authenticity. That’s why we carry the fight daily.”  Mr. Lorson says it was not his committee that began the scrap. A few years ago, a Swiss vintner sold about 3,000 bottles of wine under the name Champagne to a French supermarket chain. An anti-fraud agency, which inspects food stores, reported them.  The Swiss villagers admit there have been bad apples in the basket. After World War II, a farmer came here and made sparkling wine which he sold as Champagne, though only in Switzerland, said Mr. Banderet, seated in the dining room of his family’s sprawling 17th-century home.  More recently, a stranger from La Côte, along Lake Geneva, tried the same trick. “That triggered the issue,” said Thomas K. Bindschedler, spokesman for a committee established to protect the village’s name. “Everybody was upset about it, not only the French.”  Mr. Bindschedler, whose father was Swiss and mother Norwegian, was fishing with Mr. Cornu when the fateful phone call came. He runs salmon farms in Norway but lives in Champagne, where he is turning centuries-old farm houses into deluxe apartments.  “I am not a wine maker, and I’m not a biscuit maker, so I’m not defending my own interests,” he said. “But I sincerely think that this is illogical.”  Mr. Bindschedler called the French action “arrogant and shocking,” and added, sarcastically, “They produce something very high class, and we produce rubbish.”  In 2004, the last year the villagers could use “Champagne” on their wine labels, they sold 110,000 bottles. By last year, sales had plummeted to 32,000. The vintners have tried using names like Libre Champ, Champagnoux and C-Ampagne. “Those were really artificial names,” Mr. Bindschedler said. “It’s deadly not to be able to use your own name.”  Mr. Cornu said French Champagne makers obtained a court order in Paris in 2005 barring him from making and selling products with the brand name “de Champagne,” and from using his company’s Web site. The decision is a delicate matter because he has a factory in Besançon, France, and is appealing the rulings. Mr. Cornu accuses the French of bullying tiny Switzerland. “They are less aggressive toward Russia, Ukraine or the United States,” he said, where the French allow the use of the name Champagne as a semi-generic term for sparkling wine. “We have a problem understanding this.”  The villagers also mock France’s recent decision to increase the number of officially designated plots of land where grapes may be used to make Champagne with a capital C, as global demand soars. “On the level of credibility,” said Mr. Banderet, “if you’re going to enlarge the Champagne country, why not enlarge it all the way to here?”  Mr. Bindschedler said no one here expected a full victory. “On the legal side, we don’t expect to break the legal decision,” he said. Under a compromise, the villagers might keep the right to use their name, he said, but would be obliged to police possible violations.  “If some Korean came over here and started making sparkling wine for the French market,” he said, “we would be responsible.”  A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Produced in Champagne, But What Do You Call It?. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
Because of legal protections for the famous French bubbly wine, the people of Champagne, a village in Switzerland, may not use the town’s name on their products.