Wine Fraud - Label Fraud

Label Fraud

One form of fraud involves affixing counterfeit labels of expensive wines to bottles of less expensive wine. 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. At first, the label fraud mostly consisted of taking a wine from a region of lesser acclaim (such as Southwest France or Calabria in Italy) and then labeling the wine as if it came from more prestigious regions such as Bordeaux or Tuscany. To counter this type of fraud, governments developed extensive appellation systems and Protected Designation of Origin or (PDOs) that attempted to regulate wines labeled as coming from particular wine regions. Early attempts to protect the name of a wine region lead to government declaration on the boundaries and wine permitted to carry the names of Chianti, Oporto and Tokaji. Today most major European wine producing countries have some appellation system of protected origins. The most well 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. Producers who are registered in each appellation must abide by the appellation's rules, including exact percentage of grapes (often 100%) that must come from that region. Producers who fraudulently use grapes outside the region they are proclaiming on their wine labels can be caught by the appellation's authorities.

As it became more difficult to fraudulently label wines with the wrong provenance, label fraud soon evolved to the pilfering of the identities of wine estates themselves. 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. Label fraud, to be done well, requires bottles, corks, and packaging to be similarly manipulated. Reporter Pierre-Marie Doutrelant "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". A high-profile instance of alleged wine fraud was disclosed in early 2007, when it was reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had opened an investigation into the counterfeiting of old and rare vintages.