Mulled wine season is upon us, and you’ll find few complainants that the warming glühwein at one of the many Christmas markets is not the truest reflection of the grape and the place it was grown. But tinkering with fermented grape juice has been the source of battles and riots over the course of history.
Deception has coursed the underbelly of the wine world for millennia. In 1852 a select committee in London’s House of Commons lamented the state of play: