State standards authority ASAE says its officers have been cleaning up Portugal’s wine sector with 221 criminal cases pursued in the last decade
Food Safety and Economic Authority inspectors have checked 3,800 wine businesses, seized 7.4 million litres of wine and filed 221 criminal cases in the wine industry.
Offences include the sale of fake or corrupted wines, the trafficking of wine products and changing the labelling/origin of wines.
The criminal cases still on-going concern the forgery of wine labels.
More than seven million liters of wine worth €4.4 million and 49,178 litres of spirits, amounting to €912,000, have been seized along with 44 illicit stills and distilleries valued at around €68,000 and 243,631 litres of must with an estimated value of €97,000.
ASAE is responsible for monitoring the wine sector in terms labelling, distribution and the origin of grapes for the production of wine to prove authenticity in a market where dodgy dealings are as rife as in many other industries.
