Another fraud appears in the world of food and now it is not in Spain but in France. According to publish The Times Millions of Bordeaux wine that was really Spanish wine have been marketed.
A recent investigation carried out in Bordeaux (France) has discovered that almost five million bottles of Bordeaux wine were cheap Spanish wine. The fraud consisted of buying low-value Spanish wine and labeling it with well-known French wine brands. They did it with wine from the most prestigious areas, such as Saint-Émilion, Pomerol, Saint-Julien and Margaux. Wineries that sell their wines for hundreds of euros. They were also traded under French table wine brands that are worth even more than purchased wine.
A hard fraud for Bordeaux wines
This fraud is a setback for the prestige of Bordeaux wine, which is in a phase of defending and demonstrating that its wines are extraordinary and a high price must be paid for them. Furthermore, no expert drinker of these wines appreciated the difference.
According to the prosecution, the fraud, between 2013 and 2019 alone, generated around 4 million euros. At the moment there are five defendants who could face prison terms, although the most common thing is that they pay fines for it if their guilt is finally proven.
It seems that the fraud began with a bad harvest. In this way, the managers of Cellier Vinicoles du Blayais and a winemaker from Blaye, north of Bordeaux, did not want to breach the sales contracts they had agreed upon. So they organized a plot with a wine merchant from the southwest of France and another from the Bordeaux area who allegedly falsified the documentation so that the wine was not Spanish.
In this way, and being French, the wine arrived at Cellier Vinicoles du Blayais, which is estimated to have sold 4,6 million bottles.
