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GVG fined €200,000
One of Bordeaux’s leading négociants, Grands Vins de Gironde (GVG), has been fined €200,000 after being found to have falsely labelled very large quantities of wine.
The company was accused of deliberately mislabelling and illegally blending some 600,000 litres of wine worth an estimated €1.2 million between January 2014 and December 2015.
GVG’s former head of purchasing, Eric Marin, was given a suspended fine of €15,000 for his part in the fraud.
The négociant was also ordered to pay €3,000 in damages to the regional body the Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux.
Marin claimed during the trial that the scale and pace of production at the company’s cuverie had been too much for him to handle alone, leading to the discrepancies.
He was responsible for a cellar that produced 180 different labels, in 2014 the business had handled 20 million litres, shipping the equivalent of 18,000 cases a day.
There was no suggestion that GVG’s owners, the Castéja family, were aware of the fraud.