Gallo’s 2007 Red Bicyclette Pinot noir landed in the #2 position on booquet top charts this week. Could this, in part, be due to the buzz of scandal? Here’s the story from London’s The Independent:
It all started when investigators became suspicious that Pinot noir exports from the Languedoc-Roussillon area far exceeded historic levels.
Thirteen people including executives from two wineries, five co-operatives, négociant Ducasse and conglomerate Sieur d’Arques have been charged with selling Gallo millions of dollars’ worth of wine which was labelled pinot noir, but which, if truth be allegedly told, wasn’t. The quantity involved is staggering – 3.57 million gallons, enough to fill 16 million bottles, or 460 oil tankers.
If the defendants are found guilty, this scandal will join an elite group of international fine wine cons: A component of antifreeze added to Austrian wine (1985); Italian table wines made of water, methanol, plus a little red wine for (1986); the great mislabeled Bordeaux Case of 1989; Sauvignon Blanc fortified with green peppers and synthetic methoxypyrazine (2005); and sugar added to Beaujolais (2007).
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Tags: 2010, Pinot noir, scandal
Red Bicyclette has only been a brand since it was invented by the E&J Gallo family 5 years ago. The wine’s website carries a Healdsburg return address rather than Modesto as is usual with Gallo products. That is Gina Gallo’s turf. Gina Gallo has known her new husband, Jean-Charles Boisset, spokesman for the huge French wine company, for the same 5 years. Gina is a trained enologist who grows and makes Pinot Noir herself as Gallo’s Sonoma winemaker. Even if her nose did not tell her she was not peddling Pinot Noir, Jean-Charles should have been able to warn her that her family was buying more juice than there were Pinot Noir grape vines in Languedoc to produce it. This deal should have smelled too good to be true. Unless…