by Giles Cadman
Wine Fraud usually takes one of two forms. The first is selling wine or wine investment that doesn’t exist or at vastly inflated prices. The other is counterfeiting, creating wine that is not what it is said to be. Unfortunately both are relatively common.
Another form of fraud, misrepresenting wine by a reputed supplier is not so common but in many ways worse than the other forms. A trusted producer is above suspicion. In France Labouré-Roi is being investigated for two huge frauds.
Labouré-Roi, owned by Cottin Freres since 1974, is the largest supplier of Burgundy wines to airlines. It has also supplied major retailers, deriving 50% of net sales from exports, and works with hundreds of Burgundy growers.
Public Prosecutor Eric Lallement said during a press conference held in Dijon last night (13 June) that the fraud office was first alerted due to a disparity in figures between what the company was actually bottling and what it should have been, given the yields declared at harvest time. ‘It was as if the company was managing to vinify 100% of its musts, which is impossible,’ he said.
On investigating this, he said police found evidence of several specific frauds: firstly bypassing legal blending limits, affecting every level of the production from Grand Cru, Premier Cru and Village appellations, and adding table wine to wine musts to top up the ‘angel’s share’, Lallement said. He said the suspected fraud related to 500,000 bottles of wine, worth €2.7m in sales.
The second fraud detailed was over wine quality and labeling. ‘When the company needed to fulfil an order of a wine that it had run out of, it swapped labels with other wines,’ said Lallement. The magnitude of this fraud is estimated to be around 1.1m bottles.
This kind of unethical behaviour needs to be policed heavily.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Clik here to view.
