British drinkers who are happy to splash out £20 a bottle on premium French wines may have been tricked into tippling plonk.
A big supplier has been accused of passing off up to four million cases of table wine as prestigious Rhône appellations in a multimillion-pound fraud over the past three years.
Guillaume Ryckwaert, chairman of Raphaël Michel, has been arrested in France and faces charges of fraud, deception and violations of the country’s consumer and tax codes.
Police are understood to have taken Mr Ryckwaert and several company managers into custody in Marseilles, where they were held for 48 hours before being charged.
It is claimed that Mr Ryckwaert masterminded the fraud from October 2013 to March this year. The appelations involved include Côtes du Rhône and Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
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Nick Corke, a wine expert with the merchants Thos Peatling, said: “There is every chance that some of this wine has come across the Channel. Several French shippers send these sorts of wines to the UK. It is simply cheap wine that is being passed off as expensive wine. The trade buyers may have tasted it before buying, but there is no guarantee that it was the same wine they were getting in the bottles they bought.
“It shows that the French authorities have been very lax when it comes to provenance and labelling. They are far stricter in Rioja, in Spain, for example. There, the authorities know that what is in the bottle matches what is on the label — and so do buyers,” he added.
“Some of the French wine could even have been shipped here for bottling. There are several companies over here who bottle continental wines as well as those from places further afield like Chile and Australia.”
Mr Corke added: “The fake wine might very well be drinkable, but it is not what people expect if they are paying £20 a bottle.”
Last year Raphaël Michel reported annual revenues of more than £70 million. The UK is one of the company’s biggest export markets.
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Philippe Pellaton, president of the general syndicate of Côtes du Rhône producers, said that the company had been under suspicion for several months, adding: “Investigators were asking our members to confirm sales contracts, verify information, and answer questions about Raphaël Michel. This is serious.”
It is understood that the French supermarket chain Carrefour has suspended all supply contracts with Raphaël Michel.