A winery owner in the Aude department of southern France was up before a criminal court this week, charged with importing 48 tankers of Spanish wine before bottling it and selling it primarily in northern France as IGP Aude wine.
According to regional newspaper L'Indépendant, the case dates back to 2016 when customs and fraud officers raided an unnamed winery in Limoux after tip-offs from local winegrowers.
"In no time, the investigation brought to light the falsification of wines sold in bulk in which, notably, Spanish wine was resold as French, under the Indication géographie protégée (IGP) Aude title," said the newspaper.
It is understood that, between 2014 and 2017, 12,776 hectoliters (nearly 1.3 million liters) of Spanish wine were thus fraudulently repackaged with the company in question netting €420,000 (nearly $460,000) in profits.
The 60-year-old owner of the as-yet-unnamed winery appeared at Carcassonne criminal court on Wednesday to answer numerous counts of fraud and deception. He claimed he had been "overwhelmed" at the time, that he was unaware what was going on and that, since 2017, he had hired an assistant.
For their part, the prosecutors showed little sympathy.
"I'm surprised to hear the defendant say he was not aware," said the lawyer representing France's appellations body, the INAO. "After all, he has been working with major distribution channels for 30 years. This is not ony an attack on the whole wine industry, but on consumers too."
In the end, the winery was acquitted of deceptive practices, but was found guilty of the remainder. Both the owner and the winery received fines of €25,000 and €50,000 respectively while compensation, ranging from €1000 to €2500, was ordered for each of the four regional winegrowing unions.
The INAO had demanded €150,000 ($163,000) in fines while the two regional winegrower bodies, the Aude winegrowers' union and the Aude IGP union, had asked for €20,000 ($22,000) each.
The case falls at a particularly tense time in the region – a fact noted at the trial in which one of the lawyers referred to the 2016 arson of an estate [Domaine Jean Gleyzes] in Ouveillan, just north of Narbonne, by direct action winegrower group, the Comité d'Action Viticole (the CAV). According to the newspaper, the winery had been accused bringing in a "phenomenal quantity" of Spanish wine – over 2.5 million liters – to be relabeled as French wine and sold in bulk to merchants.
More recently, winegrowers in the region made headlines back in October after emptying a wine tanker and trashing pallets of Freixenet Cava on motorway in southern France (see "Tensions rise in southern France" in Threat Claims in Winemaker Libel Saga).
- Wine-Searcher
For 15 years, Athan Zafirov has traveled the vineyards around the world and worked with some of the greatest chefs including Francois Duc and Alan Brown.
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