Police smash ring of ‘super Tuscan’ wine counterfeiters

ITALIAN police have broken up a sophisticated criminal syndicate that was producing thousands of bottles of counterfeit wine and passing it off as one of the country’s most celebrated Tuscan reds.

A father and son from Milan were arrested and another 11 people placed under investigation for allegedly producing the fake bottles of Bolgheri Sassicaia from the Tenuta San Guido, an estate on the Tuscan coast.

They are accused of buying cheap wine from Sicily, bottling it and passing it off as Bolgheri Sassicaia, which was named Wine of the Year in 2018 by Wine Spectator.

Police said they had the capacity to produce 4,200 bottles a month, bringing in around €400,000 (£362,000). They paid great attention to detail, reproducing a hologram on the labels meant to prevent such counterfeiting.

They even found the exact same type and weight of paper used for the genuine labels, as well as the identical corks.

The criminal enterprise had an international dimension – the bottles came from Turkey, the labels, corks and wooden cases from Bulgaria and most of the buyers were Russian, South Korean and Chinese.

They were attracted by the prospect of buying the wine for 70 per cent less than its market value. The genuine product sells for around €210 a bottle.

The ring was discovered by chance when a police officer came across a case of the counterfeit wine in Empoli, after it apparently fell from a lorry. Inside was a handwritten note with mobile phone numbers of the two men who were eventually arrested.

The wine inside the bottles was nowhere near the quality of a genuine Sassicaia – but it was not bad. “It’s pretty good but I’d need to give it to people who have no knowledge of these things,” an intermediary said.