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Wine glass in Leognan, France: Wrong drop
Photo: REGIS DUVIGNAU/ REUTERS
The French police have uncovered a large-scale fraud with Bordeaux wine and arrested eleven suspects.
The suspects are said to have labeled low-quality wine from other regions of France and Spain as a trustworthy Bordeaux wine and sold it through intermediaries at home and abroad, the Bordeaux prosecutor said.
The bottles are said to have been delivered in pallets to retail chains at lower prices.
The mastermind behind the major scam, which involved hundreds of thousands of bottles, is said to have been the owner of a winery in the Médoc, not far from the Bordeaux wine-growing region.
Drug crackdown led to mislabeling
The investigations got rolling when investigators came across material for forging labels and additives for adulterating wines during a drug raid in the fall.
At the same time, counterfeit wines appeared in another region and the owner of a winery sounded the alarm that his wine was being sold under a false label.
At the beginning of the week, around 100 police officers arrived and arrested those allegedly involved in the scam in various regions of France.
The wrong Bordeaux was sold, among other things, to large supermarkets and abroad, according to judicial circles.
The counterfeiters have specialized in medium-priced Bordeaux wines, which are easier to counterfeit than the higher-quality Grand Cru wines.
With the money collected, the perpetrators are said to have financed their lifestyle and renovation work carried out by illegal workers.
"If the allegations are true, we hope that the perpetrators will be severely punished, because such practices damage the image of Bordeaux wines," said an association of Bordeaux winegrowers.
rai/dpa
