They didn’t change the recipe in a sense, they took the process of making rye and used “local” and government subsidized ingredients in a higher percentage to cut costs. Which was corn. It was already being made elsewhere.

In the case of champagne, that’s a little more involved, there is actually a distinct difference from the soil in the area that make it. So to make it elsewhere WON’T be the same. And the legislation was to protect a unique process from starting to be used elsewhere, not to strip other places of what they were doing.

The information coming from a bourbon distillery is gonna be HEAVILY biased to making them look like not the villain.