A recent news story reported that U.S. authorities are looking into cases of alleged wine fraud: instances where bottles of wine -- sought-after brands from stellar years -- were sold at auction for thousands of dollars but, apparently, turned out to be not exactly as advertised.
In their defence, the auction houses insisted they researched the provenance of the wines as thoroughly as they could and, after that, I suppose it's a matter of caveat emptor.
You take a chance whenever you buy wine at auction because the sale is final. Actual fraud -- putting a different wine into an icon wine bottle and resealing it, or counterfeiting an entire bottle, wine, label, cork and all -- just isn't worth it unless the wine is likely to fetch thousands of dollars. So when you buy your bottles at auction for a $50 or $100 or even $200 dollars, your concern shouldn't be about the authenticity of the wine, but how the bottle has been stored to that point. Has it been stored in reasonably cool conditions or in an overheated furnace room?
As for wine fraud on a commercial level, stories come to light all the time and recent prominent cases have involved Beaujolais and Italian Pinot Grigio. Most involve fairly straightforward breaches of wine law, and entail passing off wine from one region as wine from another or using grapes that are not permitted in the finished wine.
Given the size of the global wine industry, it would be surprising if there were no attempts to profit by ignoring the rules. I'm sure the great majority of producers observe them, even if only because getting caught can ruin a reputation. But there are just not enough wine police to oversee all wineries' operations. Wineries tend to get caught out when someone notices that they've produced significantly more wine than they should, given the size of their vineyards and yields.
Complaints about wine fraud have been with us for centuries. In the late 1300s, Geoffrey Chaucer warned against Spanish wines: "That wine mysteriously finds its way to mix itself with others -- shall we say Spontaneously? -- that grow in neighbouring regions."
And in 1764, a lawyer from Dijon, in Burgundy, denounced merchants and foreign buyers for substituting second-rate wines for best-quality wines, and blending wines from the south of France with Burgundy wines.
Then again, the practice of blending Rhone wines (Syrah) into Bordeaux -- a practice called "Hermitaging," after the district in the northern Rhone -- was well known and continued well into the 19th century. Was it fraud? There were no laws forbidding it, and it was written about quite often.
Until wine laws were adopted, mostly in the 20th century, pretty much anything went as far as wine-making was concerned. There were no limits on the amount of sugar that could be used to raise the alcohol level, and various additives were used to give more flavour and colour. In the 1800s, much of the best Rhone wine destined for England was strengthened by addition of a little brandy and many had essences to intensify the flavour.
It's not to excuse the counterfeiting of wine, but there's a long tradition of tampering. If anything, consumers are far better protected today than in the good old days when you really took your chances with wine.