Fake five million bottles of wine

As the British newspaper The Times recently reported, the French authorities have unmasked a new gang of counterfeiters. Cheap wines from Spain were bought for a few euros a bottle and then resold at a higher price than French wine.

While some of the counterfeiters marketed as simple French table wine, some counterfeiters advertised cheap Spanish wines as Bordeaux from famous regions such as Pomerol or Saint-Julien. According to the prosecutor, the counterfeiting gang made around four million euros in profit between 2013 and 2019.

Multiple agents included

The beginning of wine fraud is said to have been triggered by the poor vintage of rainy Bordeaux vintage 2013. The management of Celliers Vinicoles du Blayais is reportedly concerned that they will not be able to honor their ongoing contracts due to the poor harvest. A wine merchant friend of mine was commissioned to import Spanish wines.

His wine merchant friend then sold the imported Spanish wines to a second French vintner. This changed the wines’ certificates of origin to come from France, not Spain. Eventually, wines advertised as French were sold to Celliers Vinicoles du Blayais and ended up mainly on the wine shelves of French supermarkets.

Lawyers for an indicted employee at Celliers Vinicoles du Blayais declined to comment. What is clear, however, is that nearly five million counterfeit wine bottles were involved. The five arrested now have to answer in the criminal court in Bordeaux. Possible penalties range from fines to seven years in prison.