Police investigating drug trafficking in France’s south-west region discovered printing machines used to create bottle labels last September, sparking a wider criminal investigation. It led to the arrest of around 20 people on Monday during an operation in seven different regions of France, with three charged with organized fraud, forgery and money laundering. The main suspect is a winemaker and broker in the Médoc region near Bordeaux who bought low-quality wine from other regions, including Spain, and then bottled it as a more expensive local product, a statement from the Bordeaux prosecutor’s office said. “Large orders” had been placed for the wine which is “destined for supermarkets and foreign countries”, the announcement added. The bottling operations were done at night to avoid detection, he said. “If the allegations are proven, we hope that the culprits will be severely punished because these practices undermine the image of Bordeaux wines and those who work properly and respect the rules,” the local wine body told AFP. French winemakers, customs and the police are constantly on the lookout for fraudsters who pass off the economic plonk as a top crop. In 2016, police busted a Bordeaux vintner who was mixing poor-quality wine with high-quality Saint-Émilions, Lalande-de-Pomerols and Listrac-Médocs to sell to major supermarkets with prestige labels. Multi-estate owner Francois-Marie Marre was jailed and fined €8m (£6.9m) after being convicted of bringing in cheap wine at night. In 2010, 12 French winemakers and traders were convicted of selling millions of bottles of fake pinot noir to the American company E&J Gallo. Before that, in 2006, legendary Beaujolais winemaker Georges Duboeuf was fined more than €30,000 for mixing grapes from different vineyards to cover up the poor quality of some valuable crops.
