German distillery can keep ‘glen’ name

A German distillery can continue to call its whisky ‘Glen Buchenbach’ after an EU court ruled it did not infringe Scotch whisky’s protected status.

The case had been brought against the Waldhornbrennerei by the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA), which claimed that its use of the word ‘glen’ could cause confusion among consumers and make them think they were buying Scotch not German whisky.

This week, however, advocate general, Henrik Saugmansgaard Øe, ruled that ‘glen’, while Gaelic in origin, did not evoke Scotland to the point that EU law had been broken, pointing out that many Irish and Canadian whiskies also use the term on their labels.

Made in south-western Germany, Waldhorn states quite clearly on its label that the whisky is made in ‘Swabia’ (the historical name for the part of Germany around the Black Forest) and the use of ‘Glen’ was merely a substitution for its German equivalent, ‘tal’ – which likewise means ‘valley’.

‘Buchenbach’ is the name of a nearby stream