Cheating the Americans: The Pinot Noir Fraud

Does it really matter that one is not drinking what it purports to be? The stories of fraud and wine are a continuing feature of the industry. In 2000, it was revealed that wine merchants from Burgundy were engaged in a scheme of mixing vintage ‘grand cru’ wine with lower quality grades. As with forgeries of any type, the line between mocking the experts and swindling the masses is a fine one. The masses are more than content to take their quaffing, leaving aside the snobbish quibbles that usually come with the terrain. If one likes the drop, then, it has been said, no harm is surely done. A nose blunted by rough plonk is surely not going to complain that the grape is a pinot noir or a cabernet franc, provided the palette is satisfied.

That, while not an entirely convincing argument, is something that has been used in the past. The most recent wine saga appropriately involved a trans-Atlantic tussle between twelve figures of the French wine industry, 18 million bottles of falsely labeled pinot noir and the U.S. giant E & J Gallo. E & J has made a name for itself with the ‘Red Bicyclette’ label, which drinkers seem to be thirsting for in their thousands. What they did not know was that they were drinking products of merlot and syrah, varieties available in considerable quantities around Carcassonne. Ducasse, it seemed, funneled the wine to Sieur d’Arques, which sold it in the U.S. with some success.

What was remarkable was how the fraud remained undetected for something like three years. Where were the eager, and thirsty experts in this whole affair? E & J had not been doing its homework. For one thing, the region of Languedoc-Roussillon is not famed for its making of the pinot noir grape, which is one of the more problematic varieties to master. The pinot noir being sold to Gallo exceeded the supply from the region by an extravagant margin, yet the experts remained silent, busily drinking as this misdemeanor was taking place. The nose, in time, started sobering, and queries were made. In March 2008, the General Directorate for Competition Policy of the Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control audited the wine merchant Ducasse. From thereon in, the scale of the fraud was revealed.

Claude Courset of Ducasse got the worst end of the sentencing, a heavy fine and a six-month suspended sentence. He kept insisting, despite all that had happened, that the wines he was selling were ‘irreproachable’. Not all agreed. Some of the American customers have been busy crowding forums on the internet with their views about Gallo wines. The culprit may well have been found for that particular bad pinot purchased for a celebratory meal. Yet there is little reason to complain. If one buys from a colossal chain that prides itself off quantity over quality, one should expect the results of a chain distribution that goes wrong.

Such doctoring might, despite the ease of pleasing the American palette, be disastrous for the French wine market in the United States. The pinot noir is a fairly treasured grape in the U.S., if only because it was popularized with such effect in the film Sideways. ‘If Americans lose confidence in French wine production, particularly in the Languedoc region, which is already going through serious crisis, the consequences could be terrible,’ explained the public prosecutor Francis Battut. As always, it will be the small wine producers who will feel most wounded by this affair. But in the end, one can’t sympathize with those smug wine boffins, whose taste buds remained numb. In this case, the last laugh lies with Ducasse and their conspirators.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

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