Winemaker Georges Duboeuf Fined For Fraud

We first found out  last year that  Georges Duboeuf, Mr, Beaujolais Nouveau, was being investigated for wine fraud. There was apparently something to the claims, he has been fined €30,000 for fraud because some of the wine produced by his estate was blended with a variety of grapes rather than a single source. A series of barrels had been mixed with inferior grapes in attempts to conceal a bad harvest in 2004. Under France's AOC system blending is forbidden in order to maintain the terroir of a particular wine. Duboeuf has insisted that the blending was a mistake and not deliberately done. None of the wine was sold and the production manager at the winery,  Sylvain Dory,  resigned. For his part in the wine, Dory was given a three-month suspended sentence and fined €3000.