‘PinotGate’

A court in Carcassonne, near Toulouse, found the squad guilty of selling 18 million bottles of bogus pinot noir to no less than US wine giant Ernest & Julio Gallo.

Marketed under Gallo’s popular Red Bicyclette label as a fruity, full-bodied pinot, the wine was actually a cheap blend of merlot and shiraz.

But nobody noticed the hoax, least of all the California-based winery. For two years, from 2006 to 2008, Gallo imported more and more Languedoc plonk into the US thinking it was made with authentic pinot grapes.

French authorities eventually uncovered the 7 million euro scam. Those responsible - a dozen people including local vineyard executives, wine makers and a broker - were sentenced to jail terms of up to six months and fines of up to 180,000 euro for their involve-ment in the scheme.

Now the French feel exposed, the Americans embarrassed and the British look on amused. What puzzles me is how Gallo, and everybody else, failed to spot such an extensive scam for more than two years.

Label forgery is nothing new in the trend-prone wine world - long before Oscar winning comedy Sideways turned pinot noir into a household name, people were passing off cheap grapes as expensive white zinfandel or chianti (in a clamorous 1993 case, California’s Bronco Wine Company paid a 2.5 million dollar fine for “misrepresenting” shoddy grapes as premium zinfandel and cabernet sauvignon). One would think by now, the industry has learned its lessons.

But the truth is, it’s not easy to prevent this kind of fraud. Once fermented, wine can no longer be tested to determine what grapes were used to make it, according to James T. Lapsley, a Viticulture and Enology professor at the University of California at Davis. And even expert tasters can slip-up, if hoaxers really know what they’re doing.

Then of course there are those who blame mass winemaking for the scams. The lower-end and blander the wines - the argument goes - the easier it is for hoaxers to mimic them. While there’s certainly an element of truth in this, the wine community should put aside old debates and focus on what this latest ‘wine-gate’ is really telling us about crucial issues such as quality control and procurement processes.

One indication of a broken system are the feeble punishments the French handed out to the guilty parties involved in the Carcassonne scam. Despite making an estimated 7 million euro profit, most offenders will only have to pay 5,000 euros in damages, and even Claude Courset, of the Ducasse wine trading company - portrayed as the kingpin of the scheme - only got a 45,000 euro fine and a six-month jail sentence.

All this as the Languedoc, which has already suffered major losses in the recession, will likely struggle to mend a broken image that may take months, or even years, to repair.

Carola Mamberto is an award-winning journalist originally from Genoa and Nice. She has worked in media and documentary filmmaking in Italy, France, Monaco, Belgium, England and the U.S. c.mamberto@mediterra.com