Wine fraud

The most prevalent type of fraud is one where wines are adulterated, usually with the addition of cheaper products (e.g. juices) and sometimes with harmful chemicals and sweeteners (compensating for color or flavor).

For example, some wines have a deep, dark color and flavor notes of spices due to the presence of various phenolic compounds found in the skin of the grapes.

For the poor and middle class of Rome, local bar establishments seemed to have an unlimited supply of the prestigious Falernian wine for unusually low prices.

In medieval Germany, the penalty for selling fraudulent wine ranged from branding to beating to death by hanging.

In 1820, German chemist Friedrich Accum noted that wine was one of the commodities most at risk for being fraudulently manipulated and misrepresented.

Another example of early "manipulation" that became accepted, common practice was the process of adding grape spirit to wine made in the Douro region of Portugal.

[14] Other winemaking techniques that have been at various times considered fraudulent or too manipulative of the wine include chaptalization, fermenting and aging in oak barrels, using oak chips, stirring lees, racking, clarification and filtration, reverse osmosis, cold maceration, the use of cultured instead of wild yeast, cryo-extraction, micro-oxygenation, and the addition of enzymes, anti-oxidant agents, acids or other sugars that may be used to "balance" the wine.

[19] Today water is used to help balance extremely ripe grapes that would have a high concentration of sugars and phenolic compounds.

Modern winemaking has begun to promote higher levels of ripeness and longer "hang time" on the vine before harvesting.

Adding water to grape must can dilute the wine to such a degree that the overall alcohol by volume drops below the percentage threshold for these higher taxes.

[18] The deliberate act of diluting a wine with water in order to pay lower duties and taxes is illegal in several countries.

[14] The gray area between accepted practice and fraud is where water is added to the winemaking process as a means of "quality preservation".

Despite being allowed limited legal use, the practice of adding water to wine is still shrouded in controversy, and few winemakers willingly admit to it.

This practice became particularly prominent following the devastation of the phylloxera epidemic in the 19th century when the supply of expensive premium wine was scarce.

Today most major European wine producing countries have some appellation system of protected origins.

The most well known systems include the Appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) used in France, the Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) used in Italy, the Denominação de Origem Controlada (DOC) used in Portugal, and the Denominación de Origen (DO) system used in Spain.

Merchants would take the bottles of lesser priced wines and label them with the names of the finest classified Bordeaux estates or Grand crus of Burgundy.

[23] Reporter Pierre-Marie Doutrelant [fr] "disclosed that many famous Champagne houses, when short on stock, bought bottled but unlabeled wine from cooperatives or one of the big private-label producers in the region, then sold it as their own".

He invited to these tastings dignitaries, celebrities and internationally acclaimed wine writers and critics such as Jancis Robinson, Robert M. Parker Jr. and Michael Broadbent who at the time was a director at the London auction house Christie's and considered one of the world's foremost authorities on rare wine.

In addition to holding these extravagant tastings, Rodenstock also sold many bottles from his collection at auction houses, which supposedly regularly inspect and research wines for authenticity.

American businessman Bill Koch bought four of these Jefferson bottles which were later determined to be fake - the engravings on the bottle that purportedly linked them to Jefferson were determined to have been done with a high-speed electric drill similar to a dentist's drill; technology that did not exist until modern times.

This revelation cast a net of suspicion on the authenticity of all the rare bottles that Rodenstock served at his tastings and sold at auctions.

Allegedly, Kurniwan was buying large stocks of negociant Burgundy and re-labeling them as more expensive wines, such as Domaine de la Romanée-Conti.

[12] Federal governments and individual producers have taken many efforts in order to curb the prevalence of wine fraud.

However, for older vintages, the threat of fraud persists, although new techniques, like stable isotope analysis and isoscapes are likely to grow in importance.

[24] The same writer explained how growers "planted Mourvèdre and Syrah, two low-yield grapes that give the wine finesse, strictly for the benefit of the government inspectors.