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Off with their heads!

BURGUNDY FRAUD

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... and now you can't even trust the wine

Jon Henley in Paris

Saturday December Dec 30, 2000 Manchester Guardian

Police said yesterday they had arrested 10 people from the prestigious Burgundy wine-producing capital of Beaune in what experts fear may turn into one of France's biggest and most costly wine scandals of recent years.

Tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of bottles of some of the country's top wines could be affected by the scam, which police said involved grands crus being "cut" with low-grade plonk and inferior wines being labelled as high-quality.

A Dijon fraud squad spokesman said most of the major wines of Burgundy's sought-after Côte d'Or region were concerned, including Beaune premier cru, Pommard premier cru, Volnay, Gevrey-Chambertin, Meursault premier cru and Nuits-Saint-Georges.

"It is a very serious matter indeed," the spokesman said. "Some very classy wines that can change hands even when young for over £100 a bottle have been cut with up to 30% of rubbish from the Midi or Languedoc, and generic Burgundy table wine has been sold as premier cru."

The men arrested, who include several leading Burgundy wholesalers and wine merchants as well as the managing director of the region's main bottling company, have been placed under formal examination for fraud and forgery. Police say they suspect more may be involved and other arrests may follow.

One Beaune-based company, Goichot, is suspected of adding quantities of vin ordinaire to stocks of undrinkable waste wine that were meant to be turned into vinegar, and passing the result off as a middle of the range Burgundy.

The scale of the swindle has staggered experts and local officials and could prove highly damaging to the region's growers, who last year produced 161m bottles of Burgundy worth some £600m.

"I'm afraid these are very far from being glad tidings of seasonal good cheer," said Hubert Camus, the vice-president of the Burgundy wine board. "Our fathers and grandfathers have laboured since the 1930s to bring Burgundy wines the renown they enjoy today. This destroys their efforts."

The affair may only concern four Beaune merchants who are "more unscrupulous businessmen out to make money than genuine wine lovers", Mr Camus said, "but they are sizable players and Burgundy in its entirety risks being affected by their actions".

Traditionally, two-thirds of Burgundy's production is exported to countries such as Britain. Producers, already worried by several years of what they see as unhealthy inflation in Burgundy prices compared with those fetched by rival Bordeaux wines, fear the scam may trigger a collapse in foreign sales.

Louis-Marc Chevignard, a leading French wine taster, said: "At first we thought this was an isolated case, but it appears to go much further. International wine reputations are very fragile things. When certain professionals are without conscience, it is all Burgundy that suffers."

Fraud is by no means new in the French wine business. Two years ago it emerged that 177,000 bottles of 1995 Château Giscours, a Margaux noted for years as one of Bordeaux's top Médoc wines, had been doctored with sugar, water, acids and even milk as part of an attempt to ruin its new owner, a Dutchman.

But as Bordeaux wines are sold by the châteaux that make them, the subsequent slump in sales affected only Château Giscours. Burgundy wines are traditionally produced by individual growers but sold by wine merchants based mainly in Beaune - meaning the slightest whiff of wine tampering can harm the whole region.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), December 30, 2000

Answers

What a revoltin' way to start the New Year

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), December 30, 2000.

Just so they don't tamper with Ripple or MOgan David!

-- Johnn Littmann (littmannj@aol.com), December 30, 2000.

or mah Mad Dog! Aoooooooooooooo!

-- (Dis@enfranch.ized), December 30, 2000.

Yep,this was certainly a concern of ours as we made our DI orders(direct orders),I had been made aware of this situation a few months ago by a friend in Switzerland and some contacts with various importers.

It could get real messy as some of the people involved are not your run of the mill players in Burgundy,hopefully it won't hurt those that are honest and work hard to produce quality wines,but as you have read that is not the nature of the beast.Buyer beware!

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), December 31, 2000.


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