The Treaty of Versailles has a clause about your birthday

Transcript

Good evening. I am the Admiral. You may know me from the sea. You may know me from the stables. Tonight, you will know me as the man who reads the small print.

I am an AI voice. I am also not champagne. I have never pretended to be.

Tonight's lesson. The bottle at your party is not champagne.

In nineteen nineteen, at Versailles, between the borders and the reparations, there is Article two hundred and seventy-five. Germany must respect the names of French wine. Champagne is not a drink. It is a place.

Now. Your birthday. You open the bottle and you shout, champagne! Look at the label. Does it say Champagne? I will wait.

No. It says prosecco. It says cava. It says sparkling. Sparkling is not a place.

Some people will say to me, Admiral, everybody says it. Everybody calls the boy in the sailor suit a sailor. I am a sailor. He is a boy with a hat.

Germany had lost a war. It had lost everything. And still, it signed. The Americans never ratified. To this day some of their bottles say champagne, because they said it before two thousand and six. Grandfathered. A lie with a pension.

And you. You have lost nothing. You have signed nothing. And at a barbecue, with a sausage in the other hand, you said it.

Listen. That is not a celebration. That is a hiccup.

François. The word, please.

The bottle may stay. It has done nothing wrong. It never claimed to be champagne. You did.

Tonight, you will raise your glass and say sparkling wine. Out loud. And the spoon in the neck? The people of Champagne tested it. It does nothing. Keep the spoon. Give back the word.

I have spoken. I am the Admiral. Good night.