Wine giant duped into buying fake pinot

A French court has convicted a dozen people, including wine growers and a wine merchant, in a scheme that exported fake pinot noir from southwestern France to the United States.

Among those duped into buying the fake pinot noir was California-based giant E.&J. Gallo Winery.

A French merchant with a key role in the affair said Thursday that he might appeal, claiming that his wine is "irreproachable."

Claude Courset of the Ducasse company received the harshest sentence from the court in the city of Carcassonne, a six-month suspended prison sentence and a $61,000 US fine. Sieur d'Argues, the company that sold Ducasse's wine in the U.S., was convicted of fraud and fined $244,000.

Eight vintners and wine co-operatives in the Languedoc-Roussillon region, charged with deception and forgery, were given sentences ranging from a month suspended to fines of $54,000.

The southern Languedoc-Roussillon is not known for its production of pinot noir, a thin-skinned grape mainly associated with the Burgundy region.

The Carcassonne court described the fraud as "organized and structured."

According to the Guardian newspaper, investigators became suspicious while conducting an audit of Ducasse in March 2008. They noted a sudden increase in the amount of pinot noir that was being produced in the region.

The demand for pinot noir skyrocketed after being featured in the 2004 movie Sideways.

Prosecutor Francis Battut said in a telephone interview Thursday that merlot and syrah grapes were passed off as pinot grapes in a scheme dating from January 2006 to March 2008.

A spokeswoman for Gallo, a veritable winemaking empire in the San Joaquin Valley, said the company is "deeply disappointed" that its supplier, Sieur d'Arques, was found guilty, adding that Gallo is no longer selling that wine to customers.

Gallo officials said Wednesday that the only French pinot noir that was potentially misrepresented to Gallo was the 2006 vintage.

Courset defended his wines. "We scrupulously respected the contract terms of our clients. Our wines are irreproachable."

He has contended that the investigation went off course, concentrating on the wine-growing situation in general amid the global economic crisis "but also with obscure regulations that fluctuate from country to country."