• Pinotgate: That's what my pal Dave McIntyre is calling the fake pinot noir scandal, and he has some interesting follow-up information. Dave reported in the Washington Post that the federal alcohol police are investigating Gallo and fellow multi-national Constellation Brands. Gallo, of course, was the victim of the fraud, and Constellation acknowledged last week that it may have inadvertently bought some of the fake pinot, too. A federal spokesman said his agency "will be going to these companies and asking what they knew, and when they knew it." Gallo and Constellation may have violated federal wine labeling laws by selling the fake pinot as real pinot. It's nice to see someone following up on this story.
• Fake French wine in China: This time, apparently, it's the Chinese perpetrating the fraud on the French. Chinese counterfeiters have produced 33,000 cases of wine, and it looks just like a high-end French product that is exported to China. The French producers say the wine is apparently cheap South American that is put inside the French bottle and sold as the French wine. All of which makes perfect sense, given the Chinese penchant for counterfeiting Western products.
• Wine archeology discovery: Israeli archaeologists have uncovered a 1,400-year-old wine press, and it was probably used to produce high-quality exports for Egypt or Europe. A wine press is used to extract juice from the crushed gapes. The region where the press was found had a very large wine industry at the time, and the size of the press indicates that the winery produced more wine than was needed for local consumption. The only question the archeologists didn't answer? What score the wine received.
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