Giving a pig for a ride in the world of wine has recently become viral news again. And it is that the worst wine from a supermarket, which sells for 2.5 euros for a three-quarter-liter bottle, has managed to obtain a gold medal in a well-known international competition after changing the label for a more attractive one. It has been a well-known joke spent by the Belgian magazine On nést pas des pigeons of RTBF (Radio Télévision Belge de la Communauté Française). It is not the first time that a media outlet has played a similar joke on professionals in the sector.
El Comidista from the newspaper El País already gave a “vulgar and ordinary” bulk wine to taste, for one euro per liter, to professional participants in a natural wine sample in April 2015, from La Renaissance des Appellations, which was held in the Born-Cultural Center of Barcelona. It was a Catalan wine of the Priorat type, but without being covered by the Priorat Qualified Designation of Origin. They wanted to see “how much posturing there is in this world”. There were those who assured that it was “a great wine”, that it was “very good” or that it was “a wine to give to the in-laws”. But they also found who said that it was evolved or, directly, that it was worth "nothing". This practical joke brought them 1,113,766 views.
Perhaps the most notorious case was not a joke, but a colossal scam involving world-class luxury wines. It was starred by Rudy Kurniawan, who has been considered the biggest wine swindler, and the story was picked up by a 2016 British documentary: Sour Grapes. As Bodegas Protos remembers: “I took cheap bottles that I bought, put them under the tap and peeled off the labels. Then he glued the replicas of the labels of the large bottles of wine, and voila! With this simple step, he managed to make an immense fortune! Even in Catalonia there have been well-known alleged scams. This is the case of Reserva de la Tierra, which had its headquarters in Les Borges del Camp and which would have marketed between 2019 and 2020 a total of 32,809,399 million bottles of the designations of origin Terra Alta, Tarragona, Catalunya, Priorat and Montsant . They were sold through large food distribution chains and in the Asian market by counterfeiting their seals.
The person in charge of the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles in Spain since 2006, Frédéric Galtier, believes that "mistrusting organizations that award prizes or good or bad grades is nothing new, and this trap set by a Belgian television journalist is just another episode". The RTBF journalist is precisely one of the historical tasters of the Concours Mondial de Bruxelles and, according to Galtier, "is convinced of the veracity and seriousness of our contest."
In fact, in this international competition they get to taste a random selection of store-bought award-winning wines to verify that they are "the same wines that were sent to us for evaluation." Before the start of the competition, a thorough inspection of the samples is also carried out. Following a strict protocol, all their wines are tasted blind by a panel of six professionals from different countries. For two years they have also been using artificial intelligence to compile and optimize the tasting comments of their judges. Even the judges are evaluated by their way of evaluating the wines. Galtier adds that "from our point of view, this buzz is healthy because it draws attention to the need for control and a transparent procedure in the evaluation of wines, which guarantees a relationship of trust between producers, consumers and competitions or any other prescription system.
The director of the Peñín Guide, Carlos González, believes that this latest RTBF joke "should not be given more importance", although he acknowledges that it does not help the prestige of the contests or the guides, where in many cases they are part of their unpaid jury tasters. He affirms, despite this, that the members of the juries of the competitions are "serious and professional people", but this is not an obstacle to the fact that "if they want to, they will strain you, it is something inevitable". He also points out that "every time mass wines are better made". Carlos González confesses that when a wine that he does not know has obtained a high score and he is "pissed off" he goes to the market to buy a bottle with which to confirm if they wanted to give it to him with cheese. And he says, ironically, that "someone is always very smart."
Veteran taster Andrés Proensa, director of the specialized magazine Planeta Vino and of the Spanish wine guide that bears his name, admits that on more than one occasion they have tried to trick him, and gives as an example that they gave him a change with an Aragonese cava or with a Sanlúcar manzanilla. He points out that "it always occurs to someone to make a big change", but that "a liar is caught sooner than a lame person". He believes that it happens more in competitions, where there has been a case in Spain of serving tetrabrick wine to tasters, than in that of guides. He affirms that “if a wine that I know changes radically, for better or for worse, I go to the market to make sure that what I have tasted is really the wine that is marketed”.
José Peñín, also a veteran prescriber, who founded the guide that bears his name, is of the opinion that "today the distances between linear wine and high-end wine are less." He also affirms that "you can fail to award wines with a gold medal", but he does not believe that there is corruption "behind the scenes of the contests". And he speculates on the possibility that the award-winning wine "isn't so bad", or that "the table of tasters that has analyzed the wine is not something to write home about".
The director of the Vinari Awards for Catalan wines, sommelier Ramon Roset, challenges anyone who laughs at these jokes to undergo a blind tasting, which he admits is "a humbling cure". The director of this blind tasting contest, who was the subject of one of these jokes by giving him a mediocre wine to taste, adds that "there is always the possibility that you could be fooled." And he acknowledges that in the Vinari "high scores have been awarded to wines that, if the tasters had seen the label, they would never have given them in their lives." In fact, in this contest they have even awarded medals to supermarket cellars.
