Cheap German wine scandal

Press, 5 March 1982, Page 15

Cheap German wine scandal

By

Jancis Robinson,

“Sunday Times”

One of the great mysteries of the British wine trade is on the point of being solved. For some time now merchants in Britain have been intrigued by the extraordinary low prices — and often equally low quality—of a succession of new brands of Liebfraumilch, offered sometimes for little more than £1 ($2.34) a bottle wholesale, when West Ger-

man producers reckon that the price should be nearer £2. A scandal currently'being unravelled in Germany suggests the ■ reason for such appealing prices, the wine is not German at all. Last month in Germany there was a series of arrests of wine merchants accused of importing huge quantities of cheap white wine in bulk

and “Germanising” it. either by blending in a little sugar and aromatic German wine or simply bottling it under a suitably 'convincing German label. So far, the authorities have traced 6.800,000 litres of wine that has been illegally bottled, labelled and marketed under German names. Merchants it was discovered have bejn profiting from the

disparity in base price between Italian vino da tavola (table wine, costing about lOp a litre), and German Qualitatswein (quality wine costing about 50p). The "Germanised” wine is widely sold in off-licences and ’ stores throughout Britain. Of five bottles of "Liebfraumilch” that I bought in London at prices ranging from £1.89 Jo £1.99

only one tasted at all Germanic. The German authorities got their first lead in late December when a puzzled Baden vintner reported the arrival of a huge tanker carrying foreign wine which he had not ordered. The lorry driver s mistake uncovered a highly-organised system whereby tankers crossed the

German border ostensibly beading for a wide variety of different addresses in Germany’s wine country either real or fictitious before going to an unscrupulous merchant who would then “Germanise" the wine. The authorities have so far been coy about the source of this foreign wine but Italy seems the most likely.