One day I might write a book about wine fraud. It is almost as fascinating a subject as wine itself, and it has been going on for a very long time indeed.

In the first century AD the Roman satirist Petronius described a banquet given by a man called Trimalchio. The occasion was lavish, for Trimalchio was very rich. But being a former slave, he was also rather ignorant. At the climax of the evening Trimalchio proudly served his guests a wine labelled “Falernian Opimian, One Hundred Years Old.” Falernum, in what is now southern Lazio, produced the greatest wine of ancient Italy. The Falernian made during the consulship of Opimius was prized highest of all. But there was a small snag. Read the rest of this entry »

“In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace — and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”   Harry Lime, The Third Man

And good Pinot Noir, he might have added. You don’t hear much about it because the Swiss tend to keep it to themselves. Until very recently only two percent of the country’s wine was consumed abroad. The Swiss wine industry was heavily protected, and its winemakers had little reason to seek foreign attention. For the same reason, quality varied wildly.

From the 1990s onwards everything changed. Read the rest of this entry »