Wine fraud
Encyclopedia
Wine fraud is a form of fraud
in which wine
s are sold to a customer illicitly, usually having the customer spend more money than the product is worth, or causing sickness due to harmful chemicals being mixed into the wine. As wine is technically defined as the product of fermented
grape juice
, the term "wine fraud" can be used to describe the adulteration of wine by substances that are not related to grapes. This can refer to the use of coloring agents such as elderberry
juice, or flavorings such as cinnamon
and ginger
. While some varieties of wine can naturally have deep, dark color and flavor notes of spices due to the presence of various phenolic compounds found in the skin of the grapes, the use of additives in order to artificially create these characteristics is generally frowned upon in the wine world. In recent years, much attention has been focused on the label fraud
, where counterfeit
labels from cult wines and other rare and expensive wines are affixed to bottles of less expensive wine and then resold. Wine fraud can involve less expensive wines if they are sold in large volumes. Wine Spectator
noted that some experts suspect that as much as 5% of the wine sold in secondary markets could be counterfeit.
For as long as wine has been made
, wine has been manipulated, adulterated and counterfeited. In ancient Rome
, Pliny the Elder
complained about the abundance of fraudulent Roman wine which was so great that even the nobility could not be assured that the wine they were pouring on their table was genuine. For the poor and middle class of Rome, local bar establishments seemed to have an unlimited supply of the prestigious Falernian wine
for unusually low prices.
During the Middle Ages
, wines from questionable origins were often passed off as wines from more prestigious regions. In London
, local authorities established laws for tavern owners prohibiting French, Spanish and German wines from being cellared together so as to prevent the potential for mixing the wines or falsely representing them to the consumer. If a producer or merchant was found selling fraudulent or "corrupt wine", they were forced to drink all of it. In medieval Germany, the penalty for selling fraudulent wine ranged from branding
to beating
to death by hanging
.
During the Age of Enlightenment
, advancements in science ushered in a new occupation of "wine doctors" who could fashion examples of wines from obscure items and chemicals. Writers like Joseph Addison
wrote of this "fraternity of chymical operators (sic)" who would use apples to make Champagne and sloe to make Bordeaux and then sell these wines fraudulently on the market. Following the Phylloxera epidemic, when true wine was scarce, there was an uptick in the occurrence of wine fraud. Some merchants would take dried raisins grown from other species of grapevines
and make wine that they passed off as being from a more prestigious provenance
such as the more well known wines from France or Italy.
In the early 19th century, several European writers wrote about the risk and prevalence of wine fraud. In 1820, German chemist Friedrich Accum
noted that wine was one of the commodities most at risk for being fraudulently manipulated and misrepresented. In 1833, the British wine writer Cyrus Redding
echoed the alarm over the unchecked operations of these "wine doctors". Eventually the concern over wine fraud grew enough that provisions against the adulteration and misrepresentation of wine was included in British Parliament's Adulteration of Food and Drink Act 1860. Several European government also enacted legislation defining what exactly constitutes "wine" so as to distinguish authentic winemaking from the workings of these wine counterfeiters. The French government first legally defined wine as the product of fermented grape juice in 1889, followed by the German government in 1892 (later expanded in 1909) and the Italian government in 1904.
Fraud of a different nature occurred during prohibition in the United States
, when wine production was illegal, as grape merchants would sell "bricks" of grape concentrate
across the United States along with a packet of dried yeast. The bricks would come with a helpful warning label
cautioning people not to mix the contents of the brick, yeast, water and sugar in a pot and then seal such pot for seven days, or else "an illegal alcoholic beverage will result".
Over the years, winemaking
techniques have evolved. The first, primitive "natural wine
" or "authentic wine" was most likely the result of crushed grapes being forgotten while stored in a container. The process of allowing wild yeast
found on the surface of the grape conduct fermentation
in an uncontrolled environment creates a very crude style of wine that may not be palatable to many people. Hence the development of various techniques and practices designed to improve the quality of the wine but which could be viewed as "manipulating" or "adulterating" the wine from its natural or "authentic state". At various points in history, these technique may be considered too much manipulation, more than what a consumer would likely expect, and thus labeled as "fraud". However as these techniques became more common place in the wine industry, an air of acceptability followed and they eventually became just another tool in the winemaker's tool box to help craft quality wine.
Most techniques of manipulation arose from need. Early wine had many wine faults that caused a wine to spoil quickly. Classical writings from the Greeks and Romans detailed recipes that could cure "sick wines". These include adding various items like milk
, ground mustard
, ashes
, nettles and lead
. Another example of early "manipulation" that became accepted, common practice was the process of adding grape spirit to wine made in the Douro region of Portugal. This process of fortification gave the wine chemical stability
for long sea voyages and, when added during the fermentation process, left the wine with a balance of residual sugar and alcohol content that gave the wine a unique taste. This style of wine became very popular on the world wine market. Today the accepted way to make Port is to "manipulate" it by adding brandy
during the fermentation process.
Other winemaking techniques that have been at various times considered "fraudulent" or being too manipulative of the wine include chaptalization
, fermenting and aging in oak barrels, using oak chips, stirring lees, racking
, clarification and filtration, reverse osmosis
, cold maceration
, the use of cultured instead of wild yeast, cryo-extraction, micro-oxygenation and the addition of enzyme
s, anti-oxidant agents, acids or other sugars that may be used to "balance" the wine.
Jancis Robinson
calls the act of using water to "stretch out" or dilute wine "possibly the oldest form of wine fraud in the book." Water has a long history of being used to dilute
wine in order to make it more palatable. The ancient Greeks thought it was "barbaric" to drink undiluted wine. They further believed that undiluted wine was unhealthy
and that the Spartan king
Cleomenes I
was once driven insane after drinking wine that was not diluted with water. Today, few people dilute their personal drinking wine for consumption like the Greeks, but the use of water during the winemaking process is still prevalent.
Today water is used to help balance extremely ripe grapes that would have a concentration of sugars and phenolic compounds. Modern winemaking has begun to promote higher levels of ripeness and longer "hang time" on the vine before harvesting
. This increased emphasis on ripeness has had the countereffect of producing wines with higher alcohol levels (often over 15%). In many countries, such high alcohol levels qualify the wines for higher levels of duties
and taxes. The practice of adding water to grape must can dilute the wine to such a degree that the overall alcohol by volume
drops to below the percentage threshold for these higher taxes. The deliberate act of diluting a wine with water in order to pay less duties and taxes is illegal in several countries.
The gray area between accepted practice and fraud is where water is added to the winemaking process as a means of "quality preservation". Water is often used during the winemaking process to help pump grapes through equipment and to "rehydrate" the grapes that have begun to shrivel from the extended hang time. This rehydration is used to help balance the wine and hopefully to prevent "dried fruit
" flavors that may be unpalatable to the consumer. In the United States, the California Wine Institute has stipulated guidelines that allow for the addition of a certain amount of water to compensate for the loss of natural water in the vineyard from dehydration
. The use of water has been argued by its proponents as necessary to prevent stuck fermentation
s. Despite being allowed limited legal use, the practice of adding water to wine is still shrouded in controversy, and few winemakers willingly admit to it. A "code word
" for the practice in the wine industry is adding "Jesus
units" in a play on words about the Biblical story of the miracle
performed at the Marriage at Cana
where Jesus turned water into wine.
epidemic in the 19th century when the supply of expensive premium wine was scarce. At first, the label fraud mostly consisted of taking a wine from a region of lesser acclaim (such as Southwest France or Calabria in Italy) and then labeling the wine as if it came from more prestigious regions such as Bordeaux or Tuscany. To counter this type of fraud, governments developed extensive appellation
systems and Protected Designation of Origin
or (PDOs) that attempted to regulate wines labeled as coming from particular wine regions. Early attempts to protect the name of a wine region lead to government declaration on the boundaries and wine permitted to carry the names of Chianti, Oporto and Tokaji
. Today most major European wine producing countries have some appellation system of protected origins. The most well systems include the Appellation d'origine contrôlée
(AOC) used in France
, the Denominazione di origine controllata
(DOC) used in Italy
, the Denominação de Origem Controlada
(DOC) used in Portugal
, and the Denominación de Origen
(DO) system used in Spain
. Producers who are registered in each appellation must abide by the appellation's rules, including exact percentage of grapes (often 100%) that must come from that region. Producers who fraudulently use grapes outside the region they are proclaiming on their wine labels can be caught by the appellation's authorities.
As it became more difficult to fraudulently label wines with the wrong provenance, label fraud soon evolved to the pilfering of the identities of wine estates themselves. Merchants would take the bottles of lesser priced wines and label them with the names of the finest classified Bordeaux estates or Grand crus of Burgundy. Label fraud, to be done well, requires bottles, corks, and packaging to be similarly manipulated. Reporter Pierre-Marie Doutrelant "disclosed that many famous Champagne houses, when short on stock, bought bottled but unlabeled wine from cooperatives or one of the big private-label producers in the region, then sold it as their own". A high-profile instance of alleged wine fraud was disclosed in early 2007, when it was reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation
had opened an investigation into the counterfeiting of old and rare vintages.
. In the 1980s and 90s, Rodenstock hosted a series of high-profile wine tasting events of old and rare wines from his collection, including many from the 18th and 19th centuries. He invited to these tastings dignitaries, celebrities and internationally acclaimed wine writers and critics such as Jancis Robinson, Robert M. Parker, Jr.
and Michael Broadbent
who at the time was a director at the London auction
house Christie's
and considered one of the world's foremost authorities on rare wine. At one such tasting, Rodenstock produced 125 vintages of Château d'Yquem
, including a very rare bottle from the 1784 vintage. In addition to holding these extravagant tastings, Rodenstock also sold many bottles from his collection at auction houses, which supposedly regularly inspect and research wines for authenticity. One such lot that Rodenstock sold was the rare "Jefferson bottles", reportedly rare Bordeaux wines bottled for the American president, Thomas Jefferson
. American businessman Bill Koch
bought four of these Jefferson bottles which were later determined to be fake - the engravings on the bottle that purportedly linked them to Jefferson were determined to have been done with a high-speed electric drill similar to a dentist's drill; technology that did not exist until modern times. This revelation cast a net of suspicion on the authenticity of all the rare bottles that Rodenstock served at his tastings and sold at auctions.
In 2002, bottles of the weaker 1991 vintage of Château Lafite Rothschild were relabeled and sold as the acclaimed 1982 vintage in China
. In 2000, Italian
authorities uncovered a warehouse with nearly twenty thousand bottles of fake "Super Tuscan" 1995 Sassicaia
and arrested a number of people including the group's salesperson, who was selling the fake wine out of the back of a Peugeot
hatchback
.
Some major producers are taking actions to prevent fraud of future vintages including marking bottles with engraved serial number
s on the glass and taking more control of the distribution process of their wines. However, for older vintages, the threat of fraud persists.
Some practices of manipulations and adulteration have gone through stages of being considered fraudulent and later accepted as common practice. One of these is the practice of blending other grape varieties in order to add a characteristic that is lacking in the original wine. This most often occurred in the case of a wine lacking color. A wine with a deep dark color is often associated with being of a higher quality so blending in a darker color variety (or a teinturier
) into a lighter wine could enhance the marketability of the wine.Today the practice of blending grape varieties together is commonly accepted (such as blending Cabernet Sauvignon
and Merlot
) except where such blending is against the regulation of a particular appellation
(such as the controversy over the Brunellopoli
scandal in Brunello di Montalcino
).
The gray area comes when inferior wine is being blended in with more expensive, higher quality wine in order to increase the total quantity of wine available to be sold at higher prices. This is a process known as "stretching" or "cutting in" the wine. During the 18th century, Bordeaux wine
producers would often import wine from Spain, Rhone or the Languedoc to blend and stretch out their wine which they sold to the English as claret
. While this practice would be frowned upon today by Bordeaux authorities, the French wine writer André Jullien
noted that some merchants believed this practice was necessary in order for the claret to be agreeable with English tastes-a practice he describes as "travail à l'anglaise".
and Syrah, two low-yield grapes that give the wine finesse, strictly for the benefit of the government inspectors. Then, when the inspectors left, they grafted cheap, high-yield vines, Grenache
and Carignan, back onto the vines".
In March 2008, allegations were made against producers of Brunello di Montalcino that there were illegally blended other types of grape varieties into wine stipulated to be of 100% Sangiovese
, allegedly to inflate production and increase profit, in a scandal termed "Brunellopoli".
Many Burgundy wine
shippers have been found guilty of blending inexpensive wine with red Burgundies and exporting them at exorbitant prices. The Vins Georges Duboeuf
company was found guilty in 2005 of illegally mixing low-grade wine with fine vintages. The court found that both "fraud and attempted fraud concerning the origin and quality of wines" had been committed.
and methanol
to wine in order to increase sweetness and alcohol content, respectively. Some chemicals may be used to mask other wine faults and unpleasant aroma. Government authorities, such as the European Union
and the American Food and Drug Administration, across the globe have set up laws and regulations of acceptable chemicals that can be added to wine in order to avoid some of the scandals that have plagued certain wine producing countries in the 20th century.
In 1985
, diethylene glycol appeared to have been added as an adulterant by some Austrian producers of white wines to make them sweeter
and upgrade the dry wines to sweet wines; production of sweet wines is expensive and addition of sugar is easy to detect. Fortunately, the amount added was not high enough to be toxic except at impossibly high (for most people) levels of consumption (one would have needed to ingest about 28 bottles per day for approximately two weeks in order to suffer fatal effects). Twenty-three people died in 1986 because a fraudulent winemaker in Italy blended toxic methanol (wood alcohol) into his low-alcohol wine to increase its alcohol content.
Fraud
In criminal law, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and also a civil law violation...
in which wine
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...
s are sold to a customer illicitly, usually having the customer spend more money than the product is worth, or causing sickness due to harmful chemicals being mixed into the wine. As wine is technically defined as the product of fermented
Fermentation (wine)
The process of fermentation in wine turns grape juice into an alcoholic beverage. During fermentation, yeast interact with sugars in the juice to create ethanol, commonly known as ethyl alcohol, and carbon dioxide...
grape juice
Grape juice
Grape juice is obtained from crushing and blending grapes into a liquid. The juice is often sold in stores or fermented and made into wine, brandy, or vinegar. In the wine industry, grape juice that contains 7-23 percent of pulp, skins, stems and seeds is often referred to as "must"...
, the term "wine fraud" can be used to describe the adulteration of wine by substances that are not related to grapes. This can refer to the use of coloring agents such as elderberry
Elderberry
Sambucus is a genus of between 5 and 30 species of shrubs or small trees in the moschatel family, Adoxaceae. It was formerly placed in the honeysuckle family, Caprifoliaceae, but was reclassified due to genetic evidence...
juice, or flavorings such as cinnamon
Cinnamon
Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several trees from the genus Cinnamomum that is used in both sweet and savoury foods...
and ginger
Ginger
Ginger is the rhizome of the plant Zingiber officinale, consumed as a delicacy, medicine, or spice. It lends its name to its genus and family . Other notable members of this plant family are turmeric, cardamom, and galangal....
. While some varieties of wine can naturally have deep, dark color and flavor notes of spices due to the presence of various phenolic compounds found in the skin of the grapes, the use of additives in order to artificially create these characteristics is generally frowned upon in the wine world. In recent years, much attention has been focused on the label fraud
Wine label
Wine labels are important sources of information for consumers since they tell the type and origin of the wine. The label is often the only resource a buyer has for evaluating the wine before purchasing it...
, where counterfeit
Counterfeit
To counterfeit means to illegally imitate something. Counterfeit products are often produced with the intent to take advantage of the superior value of the imitated product...
labels from cult wines and other rare and expensive wines are affixed to bottles of less expensive wine and then resold. Wine fraud can involve less expensive wines if they are sold in large volumes. Wine Spectator
Wine Spectator
Wine Spectator is a lifestyle magazine that focuses on wine and wine culture. It publishes 15 issues per year with content that includes news, articles, profiles, and general entertainment pieces...
noted that some experts suspect that as much as 5% of the wine sold in secondary markets could be counterfeit.
History
History of wine
The history of wine spans thousands of years and is closely intertwined with the history of agriculture, cuisine, civilization and humanity itself...
, wine has been manipulated, adulterated and counterfeited. In ancient Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
, Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
complained about the abundance of fraudulent Roman wine which was so great that even the nobility could not be assured that the wine they were pouring on their table was genuine. For the poor and middle class of Rome, local bar establishments seemed to have an unlimited supply of the prestigious Falernian wine
Falernian wine
Falernian wine was produced from Aglianico grapes on the slopes of Mt. Falernus near the border of Latium and Campania, where it became the most renowned wine produced in ancient Rome. Considered a "first growth" or "cult wine" for its time, it was often mentioned in Roman literature, but has...
for unusually low prices.
During the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
, wines from questionable origins were often passed off as wines from more prestigious regions. In London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, local authorities established laws for tavern owners prohibiting French, Spanish and German wines from being cellared together so as to prevent the potential for mixing the wines or falsely representing them to the consumer. If a producer or merchant was found selling fraudulent or "corrupt wine", they were forced to drink all of it. In medieval Germany, the penalty for selling fraudulent wine ranged from branding
Human branding
Human branding or stigmatizing is the process in which a mark, usually a symbol or ornamental pattern, is burned into the skin of a living person, with the intention that the resulting scar makes it permanent. This is performed using a hot or very cold branding iron...
to beating
Assault
In law, assault is a crime causing a victim to fear violence. The term is often confused with battery, which involves physical contact. The specific meaning of assault varies between countries, but can refer to an act that causes another to apprehend immediate and personal violence, or in the more...
to death by hanging
Hanging
Hanging is the lethal suspension of a person by a ligature. The Oxford English Dictionary states that hanging in this sense is "specifically to put to death by suspension by the neck", though it formerly also referred to crucifixion and death by impalement in which the body would remain...
.
During the Age of Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
, advancements in science ushered in a new occupation of "wine doctors" who could fashion examples of wines from obscure items and chemicals. Writers like Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...
wrote of this "fraternity of chymical operators (sic)" who would use apples to make Champagne and sloe to make Bordeaux and then sell these wines fraudulently on the market. Following the Phylloxera epidemic, when true wine was scarce, there was an uptick in the occurrence of wine fraud. Some merchants would take dried raisins grown from other species of grapevines
Vitis
Vitis is a genus of about 60 species of vining plants in the flowering plant family Vitaceae. The genus is made up of species predominantly from the Northern hemisphere. It is economically important as the source of grapes, both for direct consumption of the fruit and for fermentation to produce...
and make wine that they passed off as being from a more prestigious provenance
Provenance
Provenance, from the French provenir, "to come from", refers to the chronology of the ownership or location of an historical object. The term was originally mostly used for works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including science and computing...
such as the more well known wines from France or Italy.
In the early 19th century, several European writers wrote about the risk and prevalence of wine fraud. In 1820, German chemist Friedrich Accum
Friedrich Accum
Friedrich Christian Accum or Frederick Accum was a German chemist, whose most important achievements included advances in the field of gas lighting, efforts to keep processed foods free from dangerous additives, and the promotion of interest in the science of chemistry to the general populace....
noted that wine was one of the commodities most at risk for being fraudulently manipulated and misrepresented. In 1833, the British wine writer Cyrus Redding
Cyrus Redding
-Biography:The son of a Baptist minister, Redding was privately educated. He moved to London about 1806, and worked for the Pilot before editing the Plymouth Chronicle and then the West Briton and Cornwall Advertiser which he founded in 1810....
echoed the alarm over the unchecked operations of these "wine doctors". Eventually the concern over wine fraud grew enough that provisions against the adulteration and misrepresentation of wine was included in British Parliament's Adulteration of Food and Drink Act 1860. Several European government also enacted legislation defining what exactly constitutes "wine" so as to distinguish authentic winemaking from the workings of these wine counterfeiters. The French government first legally defined wine as the product of fermented grape juice in 1889, followed by the German government in 1892 (later expanded in 1909) and the Italian government in 1904.
Fraud of a different nature occurred during prohibition in the United States
Prohibition in the United States
Prohibition in the United States was a national ban on the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, in place from 1920 to 1933. The ban was mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and the Volstead Act set down the rules for enforcing the ban, as well as defining which...
, when wine production was illegal, as grape merchants would sell "bricks" of grape concentrate
Concentrate
A concentrate is a form of substance which has had the majority of its base component removed. Typically this will be the removal of water from a solution or suspension such as the removal of water from fruit juice...
across the United States along with a packet of dried yeast. The bricks would come with a helpful warning label
Warning label
A warning label is a label attached to an item, or contained in an item's instruction manual, warning the user about risks associated with the use of the item as intended by the manufacturer or seller. Most of them are intended to limit civil liability in lawsuits against the item's manufacturer...
cautioning people not to mix the contents of the brick, yeast, water and sugar in a pot and then seal such pot for seven days, or else "an illegal alcoholic beverage will result".
Practices that were once considered fraudulent
Winemaking
Winemaking, or vinification, is the production of wine, starting with selection of the grapes or other produce and ending with bottling the finished wine. Although most wine is made from grapes, it may also be made from other fruit or non-toxic plant material...
techniques have evolved. The first, primitive "natural wine
Natural wine
Natural wine is wine made with minimal chemical and technological intervention in growing grapes and making them into wine. The term is used to distinguish such wine from organic wine...
" or "authentic wine" was most likely the result of crushed grapes being forgotten while stored in a container. The process of allowing wild yeast
Yeast
Yeasts are eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the kingdom Fungi, with 1,500 species currently described estimated to be only 1% of all fungal species. Most reproduce asexually by mitosis, and many do so by an asymmetric division process called budding...
found on the surface of the grape conduct fermentation
Fermentation (wine)
The process of fermentation in wine turns grape juice into an alcoholic beverage. During fermentation, yeast interact with sugars in the juice to create ethanol, commonly known as ethyl alcohol, and carbon dioxide...
in an uncontrolled environment creates a very crude style of wine that may not be palatable to many people. Hence the development of various techniques and practices designed to improve the quality of the wine but which could be viewed as "manipulating" or "adulterating" the wine from its natural or "authentic state". At various points in history, these technique may be considered too much manipulation, more than what a consumer would likely expect, and thus labeled as "fraud". However as these techniques became more common place in the wine industry, an air of acceptability followed and they eventually became just another tool in the winemaker's tool box to help craft quality wine.
Most techniques of manipulation arose from need. Early wine had many wine faults that caused a wine to spoil quickly. Classical writings from the Greeks and Romans detailed recipes that could cure "sick wines". These include adding various items like milk
Milk
Milk is a white liquid produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals before they are able to digest other types of food. Early-lactation milk contains colostrum, which carries the mother's antibodies to the baby and can reduce the risk of many...
, ground mustard
Mustard seed
Mustard seeds are the small round seeds of various mustard plants. The seeds are usually about 1 or 2 mm in diameter. Mustard seeds may be colored from yellowish white to black. They are important spices in many regional foods. The seeds can come from three different plants: black mustard , brown...
, ashes
Wood ash
Wood ash is the residue powder left after the combustion of wood. Main producers of wood ash are wood industries and power plants.-Composition:...
, nettles and lead
Lead
Lead is a main-group element in the carbon group with the symbol Pb and atomic number 82. Lead is a soft, malleable poor metal. It is also counted as one of the heavy metals. Metallic lead has a bluish-white color after being freshly cut, but it soon tarnishes to a dull grayish color when exposed...
. Another example of early "manipulation" that became accepted, common practice was the process of adding grape spirit to wine made in the Douro region of Portugal. This process of fortification gave the wine chemical stability
Chemical stability
Chemical stability when used in the technical sense in chemistry, means thermodynamic stability of a chemical system.Thermodynamic stability occurs when a system is in its lowest energy state, or chemical equilibrium with its environment. This may be a dynamic equilibrium, where individual atoms...
for long sea voyages and, when added during the fermentation process, left the wine with a balance of residual sugar and alcohol content that gave the wine a unique taste. This style of wine became very popular on the world wine market. Today the accepted way to make Port is to "manipulate" it by adding brandy
Brandy
Brandy is a spirit produced by distilling wine. Brandy generally contains 35%–60% alcohol by volume and is typically taken as an after-dinner drink...
during the fermentation process.
Other winemaking techniques that have been at various times considered "fraudulent" or being too manipulative of the wine include chaptalization
Chaptalization
Chaptalization is the process of adding sugar to unfermented grape must in order to increase the alcohol content after fermentation. The technique is named after its developer, the French chemist Jean-Antoine-Claude Chaptal...
, fermenting and aging in oak barrels, using oak chips, stirring lees, racking
Racking
Racking is the process of siphoning the wine or beer off the lees into a new, clean barrel or in the case of beer off the trub. Racking allows clarification and aids in stabilization. Wine that is allowed to age on the lees often develops "off-tastes". A racking hose or tubing is used and can be...
, clarification and filtration, reverse osmosis
Reverse osmosis
Reverse osmosis is a membrane technical filtration method that removes many types of large molecules and ions from solutions by applying pressure to the solution when it is on one side of a selective membrane. The result is that the solute is retained on the pressurized side of the membrane and...
, cold maceration
Maceration (wine)
Maceration is the winemaking process where the phenolic materials of the grape— tannins, coloring agents and flavor compounds— are leached from the grape skins, seeds and stems into the must. Maceration is the process by which the red wine receives its red color, since 99% of all grape juice is...
, the use of cultured instead of wild yeast, cryo-extraction, micro-oxygenation and the addition of enzyme
Enzyme
Enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process, called substrates, are converted into different molecules, called products. Almost all chemical reactions in a biological cell need enzymes in order to occur at rates...
s, anti-oxidant agents, acids or other sugars that may be used to "balance" the wine.
Adding water to wine
While some winemaking techniques have gone through phases of being considered fraudulent and are now generally accepted practices, a few practices have done the opposite. One of the most controversial is adding water to wine in a technique known today as humidification. Master of wineMaster of Wine
Master of Wine is a qualification issued by The Institute of Masters of Wine in the United Kingdom...
Jancis Robinson
Jancis Robinson
Jancis Mary Robinson OBE, MW is a British wine critic, journalist and editor of wine literature. She currently writes a weekly column for the Financial Times, and writes for her website jancisrobinson.com...
calls the act of using water to "stretch out" or dilute wine "possibly the oldest form of wine fraud in the book." Water has a long history of being used to dilute
Serial dilution
A serial dilution is the stepwise dilution of a substance in solution. Usually the dilution factor at each step is constant, resulting in a geometric progression of the concentration in a logarithmic fashion. A ten-fold serial dilution could be 1 M, 0.1 M, 0.01 M, 0.001 M.....
wine in order to make it more palatable. The ancient Greeks thought it was "barbaric" to drink undiluted wine. They further believed that undiluted wine was unhealthy
Wine and health
The issue of wine and health is a topic of considerable discussion and research. Wine has a long history of use as an early form of medication, being recommended variously as a safe alternative to drinking water, an antiseptic for treating wounds and a digestive aid, as well as a cure for a wide...
and that the Spartan king
Kings of Sparta
Sparta was an important Greek city-state in the Peloponnesus. It was unusual among Greek city-states in that it maintained its kingship past the Archaic age. It was even more unusual in that it had two kings simultaneously, coming from two separate lines...
Cleomenes I
Cleomenes I
Cleomenes or Kleomenes was an Agiad King of Sparta in the late 6th and early 5th centuries BC. During his reign, which started around 520 BC, he pursued an adventurous and at times unscrupulous foreign policy aimed at crushing Argos and extending Sparta's influence both inside and outside the...
was once driven insane after drinking wine that was not diluted with water. Today, few people dilute their personal drinking wine for consumption like the Greeks, but the use of water during the winemaking process is still prevalent.
Today water is used to help balance extremely ripe grapes that would have a concentration of sugars and phenolic compounds. Modern winemaking has begun to promote higher levels of ripeness and longer "hang time" on the vine before harvesting
Harvest (wine)
The harvesting of wine grapes is one of the most crucial steps in the process of winemaking. The time of harvest is determined primarily by the ripeness of the grape as measured by sugar, acid and tannin levels with winemakers basing their decision to pick based on the style of wine they wish to...
. This increased emphasis on ripeness has had the countereffect of producing wines with higher alcohol levels (often over 15%). In many countries, such high alcohol levels qualify the wines for higher levels of duties
Duty
Duty is a term that conveys a sense of moral commitment to someone or something. The moral commitment is the sort that results in action and it is not a matter of passive feeling or mere recognition...
and taxes. The practice of adding water to grape must can dilute the wine to such a degree that the overall alcohol by volume
Alcohol by volume
Alcohol by volume is a standard measure of how much alcohol is contained in an alcoholic beverage .The ABV standard is used worldwide....
drops to below the percentage threshold for these higher taxes. The deliberate act of diluting a wine with water in order to pay less duties and taxes is illegal in several countries.
The gray area between accepted practice and fraud is where water is added to the winemaking process as a means of "quality preservation". Water is often used during the winemaking process to help pump grapes through equipment and to "rehydrate" the grapes that have begun to shrivel from the extended hang time. This rehydration is used to help balance the wine and hopefully to prevent "dried fruit
Dried fruit
Dried fruit is fruit where the majority of the original water content has been removed either naturally, through sun drying, or through the use of specialized dryers or dehydrators. Dried fruit has a long tradition of use dating back to the fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia, and is prized...
" flavors that may be unpalatable to the consumer. In the United States, the California Wine Institute has stipulated guidelines that allow for the addition of a certain amount of water to compensate for the loss of natural water in the vineyard from dehydration
Dehydration
In physiology and medicine, dehydration is defined as the excessive loss of body fluid. It is literally the removal of water from an object; however, in physiological terms, it entails a deficiency of fluid within an organism...
. The use of water has been argued by its proponents as necessary to prevent stuck fermentation
Stuck fermentation
A stuck fermentation occurs in brewing beer or winemaking when the yeast become dormant before the fermentation has completed. Unlike an "arrested fermentation" where the winemaker intentionally stops fermentation , a stuck fermentation is an unintentional and unwanted occurrence that can lead to...
s. Despite being allowed limited legal use, the practice of adding water to wine is still shrouded in controversy, and few winemakers willingly admit to it. A "code word
Code word
In communication, a code word is an element of a standardized code or protocol. Each code word is assembled in accordance with the specific rules of the code and assigned a unique meaning...
" for the practice in the wine industry is adding "Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
units" in a play on words about the Biblical story of the miracle
Miracle
A miracle often denotes an event attributed to divine intervention. Alternatively, it may be an event attributed to a miracle worker, saint, or religious leader. A miracle is sometimes thought of as a perceptible interruption of the laws of nature. Others suggest that a god may work with the laws...
performed at the Marriage at Cana
Marriage at Cana
In Christianity, the transformation of water into wine at the Marriage at Cana or Wedding at Cana is the first miracle of Jesus in the Gospel of John....
where Jesus turned water into wine.
Label fraud
One form of fraud involves affixing counterfeit labels of expensive wines to bottles of less expensive wine. This practice became particularly prominent following the devastation of the phylloxeraPhylloxera
Grape phylloxera ; originally described in France as Phylloxera vastatrix; equated to the previously described Daktulosphaira vitifoliae, Phylloxera vitifoliae; commonly just called phylloxera is a pest of commercial grapevines worldwide, originally native to eastern North America...
epidemic in the 19th century when the supply of expensive premium wine was scarce. At first, the label fraud mostly consisted of taking a wine from a region of lesser acclaim (such as Southwest France or Calabria in Italy) and then labeling the wine as if it came from more prestigious regions such as Bordeaux or Tuscany. To counter this type of fraud, governments developed extensive appellation
Appellation
An appellation is a legally defined and protected geographical indication used to identify where the grapes for a wine were grown; other types of food often have appellations as well...
systems and Protected Designation of Origin
Protected designation of origin
Protected Geographical Status is a legal framework defined in European Union law to protect the names of regional foods. Protected Designation of Origin , Protected Geographical Indication and Traditional Speciality Guaranteed are distinct regimes of geographical indications within the framework...
or (PDOs) that attempted to regulate wines labeled as coming from particular wine regions. Early attempts to protect the name of a wine region lead to government declaration on the boundaries and wine permitted to carry the names of Chianti, Oporto and Tokaji
Tokaji
Tokaji is the name of the wines from the region of Tokaj-Hegyalja in Hungary and Slovakia. The name Tokaji is used for labeling wines from this wine district. This region is noted for its sweet wines made from grapes affected by noble rot, a style of wine which has a long history in this region...
. Today most major European wine producing countries have some appellation system of protected origins. The most well systems include the Appellation d'origine contrôlée
Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée
Appellation d’origine contrôlée , which translates as "controlled designation of origin", is the French certification granted to certain French geographical indications for wines, cheeses, butters, and other agricultural products, all under the auspices of the government bureau Institut National...
(AOC) used in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, the Denominazione di origine controllata
Denominazione di Origine Controllata
Denominazione di origine controllata is a quality assurance label for food products, especially wines and various formaggi . It is modelled after the French AOC...
(DOC) used in Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, the Denominação de Origem Controlada
Denominação de Origem Controlada
The Denominação de Origem Controlada is the system of protected designation of origin for wines, cheeses, butters, and other agricultural products from Portugal.-Wines:...
(DOC) used in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
, and the Denominación de Origen
Denominación de Origen
Denominación de Origen is part of a regulatory classification system primarily for Spanish wines but also for other foodstuffs like honey, meats and condiments. In wines it parallels the hierarchical system of France and Italy although Rioja and Sherry preceded the full system...
(DO) system used in Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...
. Producers who are registered in each appellation must abide by the appellation's rules, including exact percentage of grapes (often 100%) that must come from that region. Producers who fraudulently use grapes outside the region they are proclaiming on their wine labels can be caught by the appellation's authorities.
As it became more difficult to fraudulently label wines with the wrong provenance, label fraud soon evolved to the pilfering of the identities of wine estates themselves. Merchants would take the bottles of lesser priced wines and label them with the names of the finest classified Bordeaux estates or Grand crus of Burgundy. Label fraud, to be done well, requires bottles, corks, and packaging to be similarly manipulated. Reporter Pierre-Marie Doutrelant "disclosed that many famous Champagne houses, when short on stock, bought bottled but unlabeled wine from cooperatives or one of the big private-label producers in the region, then sold it as their own". A high-profile instance of alleged wine fraud was disclosed in early 2007, when it was reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
had opened an investigation into the counterfeiting of old and rare vintages.
Examples of label fraud
One of the most famous, alleged, purveyors of label fraud is wine collector Hardy RodenstockHardy Rodenstock
Hardy Rodenstock is a former publisher and manager of pop and Schlager music in Germany and is a prominent wine collector, connoisseur and trader, with a special interest in old and rare wines...
. In the 1980s and 90s, Rodenstock hosted a series of high-profile wine tasting events of old and rare wines from his collection, including many from the 18th and 19th centuries. He invited to these tastings dignitaries, celebrities and internationally acclaimed wine writers and critics such as Jancis Robinson, Robert M. Parker, Jr.
Robert M. Parker, Jr.
Robert M. Parker, Jr. is a leading U.S. wine critic with an international influence. His wine ratings on a 100-point scale and his newsletter The Wine Advocate, with his particular stylistic preferences and notetaking vocabulary, have become very influential in American wine buying and are...
and Michael Broadbent
Michael Broadbent
John Michael Broadbent MW is a British wine critic, writer and auctioneer in a capacity as a Master of Wine...
who at the time was a director at the London auction
Wine auction
A wine auction is an auction devoted to wine, sometimes in combination with other alcoholic beverages. There are two basic types of wine auctions: first hand wine auctions, where wineries sell their own wines, and second hand wine auctions, arranged by auction houses or other auctioneers to make...
house Christie's
Christie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
and considered one of the world's foremost authorities on rare wine. At one such tasting, Rodenstock produced 125 vintages of Château d'Yquem
Château d'Yquem
Château d'Yquem is a Premier Cru Supérieur wine from the Sauternes, Gironde region in the southern part of the Bordeaux vineyards known as Graves. In the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855, Château d'Yquem was the only Sauternes given this rating, indicating its perceived superiority...
, including a very rare bottle from the 1784 vintage. In addition to holding these extravagant tastings, Rodenstock also sold many bottles from his collection at auction houses, which supposedly regularly inspect and research wines for authenticity. One such lot that Rodenstock sold was the rare "Jefferson bottles", reportedly rare Bordeaux wines bottled for the American president, Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
. American businessman Bill Koch
Bill Koch (businessman)
William Ingraham "Bill" Koch is an American businessman, sailor, and collector. His boat was the winner of the America's Cup in 1992. His last name is pronounced "coke." Per Forbes William Koch's net worth was $3.4 billion in 2010 on oil and other investments-Early life and business...
bought four of these Jefferson bottles which were later determined to be fake - the engravings on the bottle that purportedly linked them to Jefferson were determined to have been done with a high-speed electric drill similar to a dentist's drill; technology that did not exist until modern times. This revelation cast a net of suspicion on the authenticity of all the rare bottles that Rodenstock served at his tastings and sold at auctions.
In 2002, bottles of the weaker 1991 vintage of Château Lafite Rothschild were relabeled and sold as the acclaimed 1982 vintage in China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
. In 2000, Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
authorities uncovered a warehouse with nearly twenty thousand bottles of fake "Super Tuscan" 1995 Sassicaia
Sassicaia
Tenuta San Guido is an Italian wine producer in the DOC Bolgheri in Toscana, known as a producer of "Super Tuscan" wine. Its wine Sassicaia is considered one of Italy's leading Bordeaux-style red wines. The estate also produces a second wine, Guidalberto, and the third wine Le Difese...
and arrested a number of people including the group's salesperson, who was selling the fake wine out of the back of a Peugeot
Peugeot
Peugeot is a major French car brand, part of PSA Peugeot Citroën, the second largest carmaker based in Europe.The family business that precedes the current Peugeot company was founded in 1810, and manufactured coffee mills and bicycles. On 20 November 1858, Emile Peugeot applied for the lion...
hatchback
Hatchback
A Hatchback is a car body style incorporating a shared passenger and cargo volume, with rearmost accessibility via a rear third or fifth door, typically a top-hinged liftgate—and features such as fold-down rear seats to enable flexibility within the shared passenger/cargo volume. As a two-box...
.
Preventive actions
Federal governments and individual producers have taken many efforts in order to curb the prevalence of wine fraud. One of the earliest such preventive measures was the founding of the Service de la Répression des Fraudes by the French government to detect and stamp out fraud among France's AOC wines.Some major producers are taking actions to prevent fraud of future vintages including marking bottles with engraved serial number
Serial number
A serial number is a unique number assigned for identification which varies from its successor or predecessor by a fixed discrete integer value...
s on the glass and taking more control of the distribution process of their wines. However, for older vintages, the threat of fraud persists.
Wine blending
Teinturier
Teinturier, a French language term meaning to dye or stain, is a wine term applied to grapes whose flesh and juice is red in colour due to anthocyanin pigments accumulating within the pulp of the grape berry itself. In most cases, anthocyanin pigments are confined to the outer skin tissue only, and...
) into a lighter wine could enhance the marketability of the wine.Today the practice of blending grape varieties together is commonly accepted (such as blending Cabernet Sauvignon
Cabernet Sauvignon
Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the world's most widely recognized red wine grape varieties. It is grown in nearly every major wine producing country among a diverse spectrum of climates from Canada's Okanagan Valley to Lebanon's Beqaa Valley...
and Merlot
Merlot
Merlot is a darkly blue-coloured wine grape, that is used as both a blending grape and for varietal wines. The name Merlot is thought to derive from the Old French word for young blackbird, merlot, a diminutive of merle, the blackbird , probably from the color of the grape. Merlot-based wines...
) except where such blending is against the regulation of a particular appellation
Appellation
An appellation is a legally defined and protected geographical indication used to identify where the grapes for a wine were grown; other types of food often have appellations as well...
(such as the controversy over the Brunellopoli
Brunellopoli
Brunellopoli is the name given by Italian press for a scandal involving producers of Brunello di Montalcino under suspicion of wine fraud, first reported by Italian wine journalist Franco Ziliani and American wine critic James Suckling of Wine Spectator...
scandal in Brunello di Montalcino
Brunello di Montalcino
Brunello di Montalcino is a red Italian wine produced in the vineyards surrounding the town of Montalcino located about 120 km south of Florence in the Tuscany wine region. Brunello, roughly translated as "small dark one" in the local dialect, is the unofficial name of the clone of Sangiovese...
).
The gray area comes when inferior wine is being blended in with more expensive, higher quality wine in order to increase the total quantity of wine available to be sold at higher prices. This is a process known as "stretching" or "cutting in" the wine. During the 18th century, Bordeaux wine
Bordeaux wine
A Bordeaux wine is any wine produced in the Bordeaux region of France. Average vintages produce over 700 million bottles of Bordeaux wine, ranging from large quantities of everyday table wine, to some of the most expensive and prestigious wines in the world...
producers would often import wine from Spain, Rhone or the Languedoc to blend and stretch out their wine which they sold to the English as claret
Claret
Claret is a name primarily used in British English for red wine from the Bordeaux region of France.-Usage:Claret derives from the French clairet, a now uncommon dark rosé and the most common wine exported from Bordeaux until the 18th century...
. While this practice would be frowned upon today by Bordeaux authorities, the French wine writer André Jullien
André Jullien
André Jullien, born 1766 at Chalon-sur-Saône, Saône-et-Loire, died 1832 of cholera in Paris, was a French vintner and pioneering wine writer. Wine historian Hugh Johnson describes Jullien's work as "the foundation-stone of modern writing about wine"....
noted that some merchants believed this practice was necessary in order for the claret to be agreeable with English tastes-a practice he describes as "travail à l'anglaise".
Examples of illegal blending
Reporter Doutrelant reported the comments of "a government inspector on the illegal use of sugar to boost the alcoholic content of Beaujolais-Villages: 'If the law had been enforced in 1973 and 1974, at least a thousand producers would have put out of business'". The same writer explained how growers "planted MourvèdreMourvèdre
Mourvèdre , Mataró or Monastrell is wine grape variety used to make both strong, dark red wines and rosés. It is an international variety grown in many regions around the world....
and Syrah, two low-yield grapes that give the wine finesse, strictly for the benefit of the government inspectors. Then, when the inspectors left, they grafted cheap, high-yield vines, Grenache
Grenache
Grenache is one of the most widely planted red wine grape varieties in the world. It ripens late, so it needs hot, dry conditions such as those found in Spain, the south of France, and California's San Joaquin Valley. It is generally spicy, berry-flavored and soft on the palate with a relatively...
and Carignan, back onto the vines".
In March 2008, allegations were made against producers of Brunello di Montalcino that there were illegally blended other types of grape varieties into wine stipulated to be of 100% Sangiovese
Sangiovese
Sangiovese is a red Italian wine grape variety whose name derives from the Latin sanguis Jovis, "the blood of Jove"...
, allegedly to inflate production and increase profit, in a scandal termed "Brunellopoli".
Many Burgundy wine
Burgundy wine
Burgundy wine is wine made in the Burgundy region in eastern France, in the valleys and slopes west of the Saône River, a tributary of the Rhône. The most famous wines produced here - those commonly referred to as "Burgundies" - are red wines made from Pinot Noir grapes or white wines made from...
shippers have been found guilty of blending inexpensive wine with red Burgundies and exporting them at exorbitant prices. The Vins Georges Duboeuf
Georges Duboeuf
Georges Duboeuf is the founder of Les Vins Georges Duboeuf, one of the largest and best-known wine merchants in France...
company was found guilty in 2005 of illegally mixing low-grade wine with fine vintages. The court found that both "fraud and attempted fraud concerning the origin and quality of wines" had been committed.
Hazardous materials
One of the most dangerous forms of wine fraud is when producers use hazardous materials such as lead, diethylene glycolDiethylene glycol
Diethylene glycol is an organic compound with the formula 2O. It is a colorless, practically odorless, poisonous, and hygroscopic liquid with a sweetish taste. It is miscible in water, alcohol, ether, acetone, and ethylene glycol. DEG is a widely used solvent...
and methanol
Methanol
Methanol, also known as methyl alcohol, wood alcohol, wood naphtha or wood spirits, is a chemical with the formula CH3OH . It is the simplest alcohol, and is a light, volatile, colorless, flammable liquid with a distinctive odor very similar to, but slightly sweeter than, ethanol...
to wine in order to increase sweetness and alcohol content, respectively. Some chemicals may be used to mask other wine faults and unpleasant aroma. Government authorities, such as the European Union
European Union
The European Union is an economic and political union of 27 independent member states which are located primarily in Europe. The EU traces its origins from the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community , formed by six countries in 1958...
and the American Food and Drug Administration, across the globe have set up laws and regulations of acceptable chemicals that can be added to wine in order to avoid some of the scandals that have plagued certain wine producing countries in the 20th century.
In 1985
1985 diethylene glycol wine scandal
The 1985 diethylene glycol wine scandal involved a limited number of Austrian wineries that had illegally adulterated their wines using the toxic substance diethylene glycol to make the wines appear sweeter and more full-bodied in the style of late harvest wines...
, diethylene glycol appeared to have been added as an adulterant by some Austrian producers of white wines to make them sweeter
Sweetness of wine
The subjective sweetness of a wine is determined by the interaction of several factors, including the amount of sugar in the wine to be sure, but also the relative levels of alcohol, acids, and tannins. Briefly: sugars and alcohol enhance a wine's sweetness; acids and bitter tannins counteract it...
and upgrade the dry wines to sweet wines; production of sweet wines is expensive and addition of sugar is easy to detect. Fortunately, the amount added was not high enough to be toxic except at impossibly high (for most people) levels of consumption (one would have needed to ingest about 28 bottles per day for approximately two weeks in order to suffer fatal effects). Twenty-three people died in 1986 because a fraudulent winemaker in Italy blended toxic methanol (wood alcohol) into his low-alcohol wine to increase its alcohol content.