I guess the first thing I should do is offer my humble apologies for the “bonus” Editor’s Journal that was posted here on April 1.
I should… but I won’t. If you got all the way through that story before figuring out it was an April Fool’s joke, well, that’s on you!
There… so much for being remorseful!
I should tell you that part of that post was true. I’m thinking specifically of this excerpt:
“…the recent scandal in which one American winemaking giant bottled millions of gallons of imported wine and labeled it ‘Pinot Noir,’ only to find out later that it had been sold other, lesser grape varieties.”
Yes, that actually happened – to E&J Gallo with its 2007 vintage of Red Bicyclette Pinot Noir. There was an investigation lasting more than a year that resulted in the arrest of 13 people in France. The “fake” Pinot Noir was sold over a three-year period, from 2006 through 2008.
If nothing else, the case illustrates just how big Gallo really is. Not only does it have extensive holdings in California’s Central Valley for its “generic” wines, plus countless grapevine-covered hillsides in Sonoma County for its Gallo-branded wines, it also imports millions of gallons of wine for blending and bottling.
It’s safe to say that no American wine company has sold more wine through the years – under any number of labels – than Gallo.
And that’s really saying something when you consider that, for many years, Paul Masson made a whole lot of wine and had a heavyweight spokesperson helping to sell it.
We’ll end this week’s missive with a video blast from the past. Do you remember…
