Massive wine fraud uncovered by French trading standards

Up to 66 million bottles of ordinary wine have been passed off as Châteauneuf-du-Pape or other Côtes du Rhônes in one of the biggest wine frauds, an investigation by French trading standards has revealed.  

UK consumers have been the main victims of the scam, in which up to 15% of the annual production of the Côtes du Rhône appellation from 2013 to 2016 was found to be fake, after the head of one of the country's oldest and largest wholesalers of wine was arrested.   Up to 1.3 million bottles were falsely labelled as Châteauneuf-du-Pape, which typically sells for £14-£50 a bottle in the UK, compared with £4 for the wine allegedly sold in its place.  

Guillaume Ryckwaert, owner of Raphaël Michel, was arrested last summer and the scale of the swindle has since come to light, according to Virginie Beaumeunier, head of the agency. Ryckwaert has been charged with fraud though denies the allegations.  

Britain was one of the biggest export markets for Raphaël Michel, which has been put under court administration. Prosecutors in southeast France said that the scam raked in millions for the company, which reported sales of more than £70 million in 2016.   The fraud was a "massive misuse of the Côtes du Rhône AOC," Beaumeunier said, involving in total "more than 48 million litres of wine".  

The producers' associations for Côtes du Rhône and Châteauneuf-du-Pape are civil plaintiffs in the case against Ryckwaert, claiming that his alleged fraud has damaged their reputation.  

Last year François-Marie Marret, a wine producer in Bordeaux, was jailed for two years for pumping cheap wine into tanks of Saint-Émilion, Lalande de Pomerol and Listrac-Médoc. They were bottled under the authentic labels and sold to supermarket chains.