The 8,000-year-old history of wine is replete with instances of fraud

The Phylloxera epidemic devasted vineyards in Europe in the second half of the 19th century such that wine production in France fell from 8.45 bn litres in 1875 to only 2.34 bn litres in 1889

All of us have opened a bottle of what should have been a good wine, only to be disappointed by the aroma and/or the taste.

Most of the time, this is due to either poor storage (heat “cooks” wines) or poor packaging (defective corks taint the wine with THC, a compound that leaves the wine tasting like wet cardboard or, worse, dirty socks). 

Occasionally, though, poor quality is not an accident: wine can be watered down, you can receive a glass of an inferior wine (whole or in part) or the wine in the bottle may not be what the label