July 08: At the recently concluded MUST Fermenting Ideas 2018 wine conference, the counterfeiting specialist Maureen Downey spoke passionately about counterfeiting of wines in various forms but focusing on multi-million dollar frauds but greed needs no boundaries as the French Consumer Fraud Agency discovered after a 2-year study that over 9 million bottles of Spanish Rose were sold as French despite strict anti-fraud laws
Maureen Downey an international expert on spotting counterfeit wines and who is a regular in the FBI panel for catching fraudsters, talked about several ways of making counterfeit wines and said the practice had been going on even in Egypt thousands of years ago but rules were not strict enough making it possible for counterfeiting wines-in fact she rued that unless there are deaths involved (remember Austrian and Italian wine scandals of counterfeit wines where people died and many were jailed in the 1980’s) the laws are quite lax.
It appears that greed knows no national boundaries, nor does the counterfeiting involve millions of dollars necessarily. France’s consumer fraud agency confirmed yesterday that 70,000 hectolitres, the equivalent of 9.3 m bottles of Spanish rosé were falsely labelled as French vintages by hundreds of producers in 2016 and 2017. According to the French daily newspaper Le Parisien, Spanish rosé was selling in bulk at the time for €.34 a litre compared with €75-90 for French rosé. For a related Report, visit
This despite strict laws in France where at least one producer isfacing prison and fines of up to €300,000.
Alexandre Chevallier of the fraud agency reportedly said: “We were alerted to the ‘Frenchification’ of Spanish wine at the end of 2015. So we launched an inquiry at all levels, from producers to importers to restaurants and distributors.” Up to 22% of the businesses subject to controls in 2016, and 15% of those in 2017 were cited for trying to present the Spanish wine as French, he said. Some blatantly passed the wine off as French, as was the case for bottles showing drawings of French-sounding but fictitious castles while others defrauded when serving wines by the glass. Some were more subtle, putting “Produced in France” on the front label but “European Community wine” on the back.
Tensions have existed between Spanish and French side with French producers accusing their Spanish rivals of unfair competition. Last year, French protestors in Languedoc area are know to have blocked Spanish lorries from bringing their wine into the country, with demonstrators emptying the trucks on the freeways.
Although production came down drastically in Spain last year in April due to the unexpected frost killing the crop up to 100% in seome regions, bringing up the prices, production surpluses pushed down prices in the country, making Spanish wines a better deal for consumers and a tempting substitute for some French distributors.
The agriculture ministers of the two countries met in Paris last summer to try to end the conflict, leading to a series of measures aimed at limiting price volatility. Delphine Gény-Stephann, France’s junior economy minister, said she had asked the fraud agency “to continue carrying out regular inspections in the sector”.
Responding to reports that the amount of wine involved was as much as 7m litres, the head of the young wine-producers organisation in the Hérault region, Remi Dumas, tweeted in French, "For those who wonder why we demonstrate, for all the wine-producers who aren't bothered by our calls for protest! Consumers open your eyes! 10m bottles of fake rosé from Spain," according to a report in BBC.
"Rosé-lovers beware," warned Le Parisien newspaper yesterday. "You're in danger of a nasty surprise at happy hour." It quoted one senior official as saying that as much as 7m litres of wine had been "Frenchified".
Earlier this year the French anti-fraud body revealed that as many as 66.5 million bottles of wine had been passed off as superior Côtes du Rhône from 2013 to 2016, in a scam that affected drinkers mostly in UK and France.
Like Maureen Downey there are authentic Managers like Philip Moulin of BBR who intently study the label on a bottle of expensive wine with a magnifying glass. He is in fact BBR's head wine detective, tasked with preventing any counterfeit bottles entering the facility. For detailed Report, please visit
For a related Article showing prices of bulk wine in Spain and France, visit
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Subhash Arora
Though we do not infer by any stretch of imagination that we in India have been a part of this counterfeiting phenomenon in wine (Scotch whiskey has been in the eye of the storm as it were-for decades with well-known adage that we consume more Scotch in India than it is produced), can counterfeiting be far behind? Particularlyu as the demand for imported wines increases, there are bound to be maverick importers tempted to indulge in polluting the divine drink and it is wise to keep in mind when a wine bottle is opened-editor
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