French executives convicted of selling fake wine to U.S.

People who sent sales of pinot noir through the roof because they saw the movie Sideways and thought they knew a thing or two about wine may choke on the news that large numbers of them were duped into buying wine made from inferior grapes.

Twelve French wine industry figures were given hefty fines for selling millions of bottles of fake pinot noir to U.S. wine giant E&J Gallo -- that's 135,334 hectolitres of falsely labelled wine.

And they weren't caught out by American buyers complaining about the imperfect nose.

Nope, it was France's fraud squad who discovered the scheme during an audit at wine merchant Ducasse, who had been buying pinot noir at 58 euros per hectolitre when the official market price was 97 euros.

In addition, the volume of wine from the renowned grape being sold to Gallo far exceeded the possible supply from the Languedoc region.

The court heard that the accused made seven million euros in profit. They were given suspended jail sentences and fined anywhere from 3,000 to 180,000 euros.