France Sold Fake Pinot Noir to Americans
- February 18th 2010
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The French had to do SOMETHING with all that surplus wine, I guess.
From AFP:
A French court on Wednesday handed out suspended jail terms and hefty fines to 12 wine industry figures for selling millions of bottles of fake Pinot Noir to US wine giant E&J Gallo.
The defendants, including executives from wine estates, cooperatives, a broker, wine merchant Ducasse and conglomerate Sieur d’Arques, were convicted of selling 18 million bottles (135,334 hectolitres) of falsely labelled wine.
The wine was sold under Gallo’s popular “Red Bicyclette” Pinot Noir label, though made from far less expensive grape varieties.
The court in Carcassonne in southwest France, which heard that the accused made seven million euros in profit from the scam, gave them suspended jail sentences of between one and six months and fines from 3,000 to 180,000 euros.
The judge said that “the scale of the fraud caused severe prejudice to the wines of Languedoc in the United States.”
The scandal broke in March 2008 when France’s fraud squad became suspicious during an audit at wine merchant Ducasse.
Ducasse had been buying Pinot Noir at 58 euros per hectolitre when the official market price was 97 euros, and generic local grape varieties were selling for 45 euros.
Meanwhile, the volume of wine from the renowned Pinot Noir grape being sold to Gallo far exceeded the possible supply from the region.
After a year-long judicial investigation, the defendants were accused of substituting wine made from less expensive local grape varieties for the Pinot Noir, which is popular on the American market.
The industry fears that the swindle, which began in 2006 and ended in 2008, could undermine the credibility of fellow French winegrowers.
“If Americans lose confidence in French wine production, particularly the Languedoc region, which is already going through a serious crisis, the consequences could be terrible,” prosecutor Francis Battut told AFP.
