Cheap pinot just like any plonk: wine expert

After 12 people in France were convicted this week of selling fake pinot noir to wine giant E & J Gallo, many people might have wondered how buyers didn't notice the difference in the first place.

The scheme saw more than 135,334 hectolitres of pinot plonk shipped to Gallo between January 2006 and March 2008 with nary a complaint from wine drinkers or Gallo buyers.

However, a U.S. wine expert, Jon Bonné, said the missed clues can be partly blamed on the pinot noir grape itself. The real pinot noir that Gallo sold before the swindle was likely a cheap version, with a taste not that different from the fake version.

In many cases, cheap pinot noir will already be mixed with up to 25 per cent of other grapes, to boost the flavour, Bonné said in an interview Thursday with CBC radio's As It Happens.

"It might seem surprising that this amount of wine could go in unnoticed but it's also possible that it didn't differ that drastically from lots that (E & J Gallo) had received that were absolutely 100 per cent pinot," said Bonné, wine editor for the San Francisco Chronicle. "Cheap pinot noir doesn't particularly taste like pinot noir. It just tastes like something else — like somewhat undifferentiated wine. It might taste somewhat thin, bulked up with sugar or enhanced in some way."

The fake pinot noir was actually cheaper syrah and merlot grapes, and even after two years, it wasn't a taste complaint that uncovered the scam.

French investigators auditing one of Gallo's suppliers, wine merchant Société Ducasse, found the company had purchased more pinot noir grapes than had been grown in the entire Limoux region of France, the only region where the grape can be grown because of the cool climate.

The pinot noir grape is thin-skinned and grown in relatively small quantities, making it more a expensive grape.

The 2004 Hollywood movie, Sideways, which featured the escapades of two men in California's wine country, turned pinot noir into an instant hit. Gallo launched its Red Bicyclette brand of pinot noir around the time Sideways came out, and consumers snapped it up. With Gallo unable to fulfil U.S. demand from its own vineyards, it turned to buying the wine globally.

But as Bonné said, cheap pinot noir doesn't have a distinctive taste, compared to wine made from expensive pinot varieties.

"(Gallo) probably looked at the price, and were probably told it was pinot noir, and it didn't taste so far off so as not to taste like (pinot noir,)" Bonné said.