The scandal in the wine world for an alleged fraud in Valdepeñas. Specifically from four wineries of the Denomination of Origin. The alleged fraud was based on the marketing of bottles of wine labeled as aging, reserve and great reserve improperly. According to the prosecution's complaint, these wineries have sold these wines for years when they did not meet the production requirements or the minimum aging period, neither in barrels nor in bottles.
The four wineries that allegedly carried out the fraud are Félix Solís, García Carrión, Navarro López and Fernández Castro. All of them marketers of wines from the Valdepeñas Protected Designation of Origin. In this way, these companies, together with their administrators, are investigated by scam, misleading advertising and document falsification. For this reason, the judge has authorized to continue with the investigation to clarify the types of wines sold from each of these wineries between 2010 and 2019, as well as its commercial conditions.
The figures do not add up to this fraud in Valdepeñas
Both the figures reported to the Protected Designation of Origin Valdepeñas as declared during inspection they don't add up to sales made by these wineries. If we analyze the case of Félix Solís, he allegedly sold 472.745 liters of crianza more than those declared and 146.706 more reserve liters. García Carrión sold three million liters of Gran Reserva wine to a single customer when he declared less than one million to the PDO.
In the case of the other two wineries, the case of Fernando Castro is surprising with a difference in sales to Alcampo of 1.367% in aging wines, and 1.941% in reserve wines. In the case of Bodegas Navarro López, it sold more than 90 thousand liters more than those declared in each category.
Complaints from agricultural entities
The whole case began with the complaints of COAG, ASAJA and UPA, claiming that the packaged wines did not correspond to the qualification of the labels. That is why the prosecution began to investigate. Months later, the García Carrión group was added to the complaint. This company claimed that there was not enough control in the DO. and that it was run by people closely related to the Félix Solís Group.
As can be seen in the investigation, the little control of those years in the DO Valdepeñas has led some wineries to take advantage of the moment and have allegedly sold, fraudulently, many bottles of wine.
All this from fraud in Valdepeñas will significantly affect the prestige of the DO that you can only recover it with a control that is audited and also with a lot of time. The prestige of Spanish wine can also affect, since this Denomination of Origin sells more than 70 million bottles, although nobody knows how many anymore, but it has a great international presence that will be diminished in some way. We'll see how this whole thing ends.
