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Aldi has risen to become Germany's largest wine retailer by the trading principle of the lowest price. Around twenty percent of all wines sold in Germany go over the counter there.

Right behind the Empoli exit on the roaring Pisa-Firenze super highway, the heavily armed officers of the Corpo Forestale delle Stato are lurking. But the Italian forest police don't wave out traffic offenders, they check tankers and grape transporters to put a stop to wine counterfeiters. Commissario Luigi Bartolozzi is sweating under his beret in the midday heat: "At harvest time, wine counterfeiters get grapes or wine from outside - especially if the harvest is bad." These controls, which are rigid by Italian standards, are to stem the unchecked flow of cheap wines from southern Italy, which are pouring into the northern wine-growing areas.

2002 is a catastrophic vintage in Italy, weeks of rain caused large harvest failures. So the prices for grapes, must and wine will rise and make life difficult for those bottlers who have already concluded fixed supply contracts with German discounters. They only have the choice to deliver at a loss, to pay contractual penalties, or to "correct the papers", as the process of wine falsification is called in Italy. Thus, the 2002 vintage will be a great year after all - but only for the fakers.

The DOC "Prosecco di Valdobbiadene e Conegliano" also knows this problem. The DOC certificate guarantees the exclusive origin of the sparkling wines from the small growing area. The vineyards yield 38 million bottles at the most - thus, a bottle of DOC Prosecco costs at least 4 euro in Germany today. Only at the Aldinicht trading giant, there a small miracle happened: For years, the DOC prosecco was sold for unrivaled cheap 1.99 euro, about 3 to 4 million bottles per year.

As early as in 2000, the Prosecco Protection Consortium personally informed the Aldi-Süd chief buyers in Mülheim about the suspicion of wine counterfeiting. There, they reacted calmly and kept the supplier Cesare Grossi as well as the sales price - even when the Italian judiciary became active on the initiative of the "repressione frodi" anti-fraud authority. Finally, in October 2002, the sentence was passed: 8 months of imprisonment on probation for the confessed Aldi supplier, because he faked 3.3 million bottles of Prosecco and put them on the market. The Grossi case is unique because the Italian judiciary rarely punishes wine counterfeits. But Grossi pushed it too far: In his bottling plant, only a yellowed note with the company's name on the bell suggests that this is the birthplace of the most drunk Prosecco in Germany. Even inexperienced wine buyers should have been puzzled by the sight of the former chicken farm with its 40 rusting tanks.
It was not until autumn 2002 that the Aldi group reacted and delisted the blockbuster. "Prosecco is a seasonal product that has been taken out of the program", Thomas Hüsken, Aldi's chief buyer, officially justifies the withdrawal from the lucrative DOC Prosecco business.

Even in the DOCG-origin zone Chianti between Pisa and Siena, a lot of money can be made by transforming cheapest table wines into DOCG Chianti: A tanker truck with Chianti is worth 80,000 euro, one with table wine only 20,000: makes 60,000 euro profit by a stroke of the pen - and the risk of being discovered is zero. With the prescribed DOCG protective banderoles, counterfeiters also have an easy game because they are not printed on watermark paper. Moreover, wine counterfeits can rarely be detected analytically.

"In the past six to seven years, practically all Chianti fraud cases that have surfaced have led to the German market," says Luca Gianozzi, director of the Chianti Protection Consortium. In contrast to the judiciary, the consortia have a vital interest in the wine adulterators being exposed: If too much wine is smuggled in, the wine price in the appellations falls. "In no other market is the price screw turned so aggressively as in Germany," says Gianozzi. In 1999, for example, two bottlers in Chianti Classico sold about 5 million bottles of "Chianti" to the German Metro chain: for about one euro a bottle. A network of suppliers "corrected" the papers in the usual way. Meanwhile, charges have been brought against the counterfeiters in Pisa.

In Germany, the million euro business with discount wines is handled by a small clique of traders - everyone knows everyone. These importers regularly claim to do everything to protect consumers from faked wines. The responsibility, they say, lies solely with the Italian producers. Roberto Castellani, a bottler, is one of them: In 1981, his export turnover to Germany amounted to thirty thousand marks. Today he is one of the big players - his turnover is estimated at 25 to 30 million euros, with an operating profit of around 23 percent. Aldi sold about eight million bottles of Castellani Chianti per year for an unbeatable 1.99, which is ten percent of the Chianti annual production. With its price, the wine was also below the production costs. As late as in August 2002, Aldi raised the price to 2.49 euro. Maybe because the public prosecutor's office in Pisa is investigating Castellani on suspicion of wine counterfeiting.

"This is a German problem", is the unanimous comment on the Italian side. There, they refer to the purchasing policy of the large discounters, which do not pass on price increases depending on the vintage to their customers because the German discounter consumers only pay attention to the price. The consumer protection authorities in Germany, on the other hand, complain that wine counterfeiting is considered a trivial offense in Italy and that charges are hardly ever brought. Without a legally binding judgment, however, the German authorities cannot take action. And when the wine public prosecutor's office in Bad Kreuznach asks for administrative assistance in Italy, it receives standardized refusals after a long time - a vicious circle. So, consumer protection is as helpless in matters of wine counterfeiting as Commissario Bartolozzi's attempt to curb wine proliferation by traffic controls.


Wines in paragraphs
The Italian wine law is divided into four levels
The lowest level is VdT "Vino da Tavola", for wines without vintage and origin indication.
IGT "Indicazione Geografica Tipica" stands for wines aiming at the DOC status.
DOC "Denominazione di Origine Controllata" is the designation of wines from a legally defined growing zone. (e.g. Prosecco di Valdobbiadene e Conegliano)
The top level is reserved for the 22 DOCG wines: "Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita". They are identified by red numbered banderoles. (e.g. Chianti and Chianti Classico)

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