Top Burgundian négociant implicated in “massive” wine fraud

According to local paper Le Bien, the four are accused of wilfully mislabelling bottles, mixing wines from appellations and using incorrect medals on bottles.

The newspaper said that over the past 18 months the gendarmerie in Dijon had been conducting an investigation into the house alongside the direction de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes (DGCCRF).

They claim to have discovered a “massive and very organised” fraud operation, which was revealed in “hundreds of documents” in the négociant’s accounts and spanned the period 2005-2009 and presented their findings last week.

A report issued yesterday from the authorities in Dijon stated that as many as 500,000 bottles may have been doctored with wines from other appellations and a further 1.1m were wrongly labelled.

The statement continued: “During the period in question the company sold 36m bottles. In view of the number of bottles involved, it is clear that this was not an error but rather had been organised.”

Emmanuel Touraille, the négociant’s lawyer, told Agence France Presse that his clients were co-operating fully with the inquiry.

No decisions have yet been taken on charges the four men in custody will face.