Column: Arbor Vinous
Joel Goldberg
It’s all over except for the lawsuits.
A court in southern France has convicted a dozen wine producers and merchants in what Agence France-Presse called “one of the biggest scams ever to rattle the world of wine.”
Their crime? Duping U.S. wine behemoth E&J Gallo by substituting cheaper grapes for Pinot Noir in 1.5 million cases of wine they sold to Gallo for its moderate-priced “Red Bicyclette” label, in the process pocketing nearly $10 million in illicit profits.
Did Gallo ever tumble to the scam? Au contraire.
The French and British press, which require scant encouragement to paint Americans as loutish arrivistes on matters of the grape, pointed out with barely-restrained glee that no one at Gallo detected the counterfeit juice, either by tasting or testing. And no whistle-blowing American wine critic ever raised the cry, “This can’t be Pinot Noir.”
One defense lawyer even had the gall to plead for acquittal of his client by dryly noting to the court, “Not a single American consumer complained,” while The Times (U.K.) went so far as to tweak Washington Post wine critic Dave McIntyre’s lavish praise of wines from the region.
But it was a French police fraud squad, in the role of a real-life Inspector Clouseau, that brought the scheme to light. [Full Story]