Fraudsters are at it again, this time producing counterfeit French wines with high price tags.
Bottles being passed off as vintage Bordeaux are in fact simply counterfeit plonk.
The huge fraud was exposed by French customs and fraud agents. Thousands of bottles were shown to be fake at a specialist lab in Bordeaux, operated by the country’s finance ministry.
Attempts have been made to make the labels appear genuine, but some contain basic spelling errors and many have been printed on the wrong type of paper.
Others capitalise on similar words such as replacing Château Margaux with Chatelet Margaux or Chatelet Cheval Blanc for the 1947 Château Cheval Blanc, one of the top French wines.
Some labels have proclaimed Luxembourg as a product of France. The fraudsters would be even more dangerous if they had access to an atlas.
But rising demand in Asia has caused con artists to become more sophisticated. Used, empty bottles can be bought to enable wine to pass tests on the bottle’s glass or labels.
The bottles can be purchased from French vineyards themselves and also from auction websites, a 1958 Château Lafite Rothschild, a 1928 Château Margaux and a 1971 Romanee Conti among them.
Wineries in France have begun to use lasers to engrave their bottles with unique serial numbers in order to foil the fraudsters. Others are turning to the use of hologrammes or bar-coded stickers. These touch both the bottle and the foil covering the cork and will shred if tampered with.
The extent of the trade in fake wines is not known, particularly as many sales are private ones. Many have fallen victim, having spent vast sums for rare wines. Cheval Blanc, for example, has gone for US$11,500 at auction.
One billionaire collector was defrauded of US$5 million on some 550 bottles of fake vintage but real plonk.
