Wine fraud is a form of
fraudIn the broadest sense, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and is also a civil law violation....
in which
wineWine is an alcoholic beverage typically made of fermented grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes...
s are sold to a customer illicitly, usually having the customer spend more money than the product is worth, or causing sickness due to harmful chemicals being mixed into the wine. Wine fraud can involve less expensive wines if they are sold in large volumes.
Wine SpectatorWine Spectator is a magazine that focuses on wine. Founded as a San Diego-based tabloid newspaper by Bob Morrisey in 1976, it was purchased three years later by publisher Marvin R. Shanken. That year, its panel of experts blind tasted and reviewed over 12,400 wines...
noted that some experts suspect that as much as 5% of the wine sold in secondary markets could be
counterfeitA counterfeit product is an imitation which infringes upon a production monopoly held by either a state or corporation. Goods are produced with the intent to bypass this monopoly and thus take advantage of the established worth of the previous product...
.
One form of fraud involves affixing counterfeit
labelsWine labels are important sources of information for consumers since they tell the type and origin of the wine. The label is often the only resource a buyer has for evaluating the wine before purchasing it...
of expensive wines to bottles of less expensive wine.
Wine fraud is a form of
fraudIn the broadest sense, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and is also a civil law violation....
in which
wineWine is an alcoholic beverage typically made of fermented grape juice. The natural chemical balance of grapes is such that they can ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes or other nutrients. Wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast consumes...
s are sold to a customer illicitly, usually having the customer spend more money than the product is worth, or causing sickness due to harmful chemicals being mixed into the wine. Wine fraud can involve less expensive wines if they are sold in large volumes.
Wine SpectatorWine Spectator is a magazine that focuses on wine. Founded as a San Diego-based tabloid newspaper by Bob Morrisey in 1976, it was purchased three years later by publisher Marvin R. Shanken. That year, its panel of experts blind tasted and reviewed over 12,400 wines...
noted that some experts suspect that as much as 5% of the wine sold in secondary markets could be
counterfeitA counterfeit product is an imitation which infringes upon a production monopoly held by either a state or corporation. Goods are produced with the intent to bypass this monopoly and thus take advantage of the established worth of the previous product...
.
Label fraud
One form of fraud involves affixing counterfeit
labelsWine labels are important sources of information for consumers since they tell the type and origin of the wine. The label is often the only resource a buyer has for evaluating the wine before purchasing it...
of expensive wines to bottles of less expensive wine. In 2002, bottles of the weaker 1991 vintage of Château Lafite Rothschild were relabeled and sold as the acclaimed 1982 vintage in
ChinaChina is a cultural region, an ancient civilization, and, depending on perspective, a national or multinational entity extending over a large area in East Asia....
. In 2000,
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
authorities uncovered a warehouse with nearly twenty thousand bottles of fake "Super Tuscan" 1995
SassicaiaTenuta San Guido is an Italian winery in the DOC Bolgheri in Toscana, known as a producer of "Super Tuscan" wine. Sassicaia is considered one of Italy's top Bordeaux-style red wines...
and arrested a number of people including the group's salesperson, who was selling the fake wine out of the back of a
PeugeotPeugeot is a major French car brand, part of PSA Peugeot Citroën, the second largest European carmaker.Peugeot's roots go back to 19th-century coffee mill and bicycle manufacturing. The Peugeot company and family is originally from Sochaux, France. Peugeot retains a large manufacturing plant and...
hatchbackHatchback is a term designating an automobile design, containing a passenger cabin with an integrated cargo space, accessed from behind the vehicle by a single, top-hinged tailgate or large flip-up window...
.
Label fraud, to be done well, requires bottles, corks, and packaging to be similarly manipulated.
In 1995, police in Hong Kong discovered over 12,000 bottles of supposed
Mouton CadetMouton Cadet is the brand name of a popular range of modestly priced, generic Bordeaux wines, considered Bordeaux' most successful brand. Created by Baron Philippe de Rothschild of the Rothschild banking dynasty, the wine named after his premier cru vineyard Château Mouton Rothschild, Mouton Cadet...
in a supermarket. Although Mouton Cadet is not an expensive wine, thousands of people could be defrauded and the perpetrators could make substantial illegal profits.
Reporter Pierre-Marie Doutrelant "disclosed that many famous Champagne houses, when short on stock, bought bottled but unlabeled wine from cooperatives or one of the big private-label producers in the region, then sold it as their own".
A high-profile instance of alleged wine fraud was disclosed in early 2007, when it was reported that the FBI had opened an investigation into the counterfeiting of old and rare vintages (Wilke, McCoy).
Preventive actions
Some major producers are taking actions to prevent fraud of future vintages including marking bottles with engraved
serial numberA serial number is a unique number assigned for identification which varies from its successor or predecessor by a fixed discrete integer value...
s on the glass and taking more control of the distribution process of their wines. However, for older vintages, the threat of fraud persists.
Wine blending
More common is the practice of blending inexpensive wine with more expensive wine or other materials and selling it at the higher price. A highly regarded wine shipping company, Henri Cruse of the famous
The Cruse Winemaking DynastyThe Cruse Winemaking Dynasty is a well-known French Ashkenazic Jewish winemaking family originally from Denmark who has resided in the Medoc and Bordeaux regions of France since the early 19th century and is famous for its various brands of quality wines...
, was implicated in the blending of cheap Rioja wine into
Bordeaux wineA Bordeaux wine is any wine produced in the Bordeaux region of France. Average vintages produce over 700 million bottles of Bordeaux wine, although in good vintages, this total can exceed over 900 million, ranging from large quantities of everyday table wine, to some of the most expensive and...
. The Bordeaux wine fraud scandal in 1973 forced the sale of
Château Pontet-CanetChâteau Pontet-Canet is a winery in the Pauillac appellation of the Bordeaux wine region of France. Chateau Pontet-Canet is also the name of the red wine produced by this property...
.
In 1988, a whistle blower in
Château GiscoursChâteau Giscours is a winery in the Margaux appellation of the Bordeaux region of France, in the commune of Labarde. The wine produced here was classified as one of fourteen Troisièmes Crus in the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855.-History:The first written reference to the domain of...
, classified as one of the 65 best vineyards of Bordeaux, revealed that the château illegally blended lesser vintages of the property into more valuable ones, which were sold at the higher price, in addition to other crimes of fraud and deception.
Reporter Doutrelant reported the comments of "a government inspector on the illegal use of sugar to boost the alcoholic content of Beaujolais-Villages: 'If the law had been enforced in 1973 and 1974, at least a thousand producers would have put out of business'". The same writer explained how growers "planted
MourvèdreMourvèdre, Mataró, or Monastrell is variety of wine grape used to make both strong, dark red wines and rosés. It is an international variety grown in many regions around the world....
and Syrah, two low-yield grapes that give the wine finesse, strictly for the benefit of the government inspectors. Then, when the inspectors left, they grafted cheap, high-yield vines,
GrenacheGrenache is one of the most widely planted red wine grape varieties in the world. It ripens late, so needs hot, dry conditions such as those found in Spain the south of France and California's San Joaquin Valley...
and Carignan, back onto the vines".
In March 2008, allegations were made against producers of
Brunello di MontalcinoBrunello di Montalcino is a red Italian wine produced in the vineyards surrounding the town of Montalcino located about southwest of Florence in the Tuscany wine region...
that there were illegally blended other types of grape varieties into wine stipulated to be of 100%
SangioveseSangiovese is a red Italian wine grape variety whose name derives from the Latin sanguis Jovis, "the blood of Jove". Though it is the grape of most of central Italy from Romagna down to Lazio, Campania and Sicily, outside Italy it is most famous as the main component of the Chianti blend in...
, allegedly to inflate production and increase profit, in a scandal termed "
BrunellopoliBrunellopoli is the name given by Italian press for a scandal involving producers of Brunello di Montalcino under suspicion of wine fraud, first reported by Italian wine journalist Franco Ziliani and American wine critic James Suckling of Wine Spectator...
".
Burgundy wine blending
Many
Burgundy wineBurgundy wine is wine made in the Burgundy region in eastern France. The most famous wines produced here - those commonly referred to as Burgundies - are red wines made from Pinot Noir grapes or white wines made from Chardonnay grapes. Red and white wines are also made from other grape varieties,...
shippers have been found guilty of blending inexpensive wine with red Burgundies and exporting them at exorbitant prices. The Vins
Georges DuboeufGeorges Duboeuf is the founder of Les Vins Georges Duboeuf, one of the largest and best-known wine merchants in France...
company was found guilty in 2005 of illegally mixing low-grade wine with fine vintages. The court found that both "fraud and attempted fraud concerning the origin and quality of wines" had been committed. One particularly blatant Burgundy shipper, Bernard Grivelet, bottled inferior wine from elsewhere in
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
and sold it in magnum and double magnum bottles as Burgundy in 2001.
In 2002, Jacques Hemmer, a Bordeaux shipper, was caught blending cheap wines from southern France into much more expensive Bordeaux. He was convicted of his crime and paid a fine.
Hazardous materials
Twenty-three people died in 1986 because a fraudulent winemaker in Italy blended toxic
methanolMethanol, also known as methyl alcohol, wood alcohol, wood naphtha or wood spirits, is a chemical with formula CH3OH . It is toxic: drinking 10 ml will cause blindness, and as little as 100 ml will cause death...
(wood alcohol) into his low-alcohol wine to increase its alcohol content.
In 1985,
diethylene glycolDiethylene glycol is an organic compound described by the structural formula HO-CH2-CH2-O-CH2-CH2-OH. It is a clear, hygroscopic, odorless liquid...
appeared to have been added as an adulterant by some Austrian producers of white wines to make them sweeter and upgrade the dry wines to sweet wines; production of sweet wines is expensive and addition of sugar is easy to detect. Fortunately, the amount added was not high enough to be toxic except at impossibly high (for most people) levels of consumption (one would have needed to ingest about 28 bottles per day for approximately two weeks in order to suffer fatal effects).
Sources
- Barr, Andrew. Wine Snobbery. NY: Simon & Schuster, 1988.
- Fielden, Christopher. “Is this the Wine You Ordered, Sir?”: The Dark Side of the Wine Trade. London: Helm, 1990.
- Hallgarten, Fritz. Wine Scandal. NY: Time Warner, 1988.
- Berger, Dan, Napa Valley Register (August 10, 2004). Why wine scandals rarely hit U.S.
Footnotes