OK, I have slacked of late. Based on my blog stats it seems I slacked SO much that I have even lost some readers. I hope you will forgive me and come back for my uber compelling wine prose. I’m full of excuses. It is my busy season (50% of kosher wine is sold in the 4-8 weeks leading up to Passover). I’ve been traveling all over the place – I’m actually writing this from Logan International Airport in Boston (my flight is delayed or I would not have even had a chance to write it). And about 20 minutes into a post this past Sunday night, my computer was taken over by a nasty virus that my fabulous IT guy has not been able to fix (yet – I hope).
But you don’t want excuses. You want action. The latest wine related story of interest relates to FAKE PINOT NOIR. Huh? What is fake Pinot Noir? When I was working in Napa winemakers told me about “hiding” merlot in their Cabernet, but here it seems bulk wine producers were actually trying to pass off a merlot (blended it seems with Syrah) AS ACTUAL Pinot Noir.
The wine in question is E&J Gallo’s “Red Bicyclette”.
Apparently Gallo paid these 8 growers & bulk wine producers from the Southern France Languedoc region in excess of 7 million Euro for said fake wine. On the bulk level that amounts to…well, a lot of cheap wine. Oh, and this scam had apparently been going on for over 2 years. So if you had this wine – you might have been PINOT-ed!
Whether it is fake expensive Bordeaux, fake Brunello or fake Georges Duboeuf wine, it seems pulling the wool over unsuspecting wine drinkers is easy enough. Apparently testing wine to determine exactly what it is can be difficult, costly & inaccurate.
This makes me think more and more that if you tell consumers that a wine is highly rated or very expensive that they will (as has been scientifically proven) believe that it is a good wine. I’m not saying you can give a regular wine drinker crappy wine and expect him to believe it is a first growth Bordeaux. But I do believe that it is further proof that the line between a very good and what some call “great” wines is a very thin line indeed.
Happy who knows what the heck you are drinking wine tasting!
WTG
