Direction the flat country where a tasty prank has highlighted the lack of seriousness of certain wine competitions.
If you are used to unearthing small nuggets in the wine department , based on medal-winning bottles, you may think twice about it in the future by reading these few lines.
Some smart guys have managed to trick an international wine competition by winning the gold medal with… piquette, sold at a derisory price.
This incredible story, which has caused a lot of talk in the oenology community, took place about ten days ago with our Belgian neighbours.
They fool the jury of a wine competition with piquette and win a gold medal
We owe this hoax to a famous local RTBF program entitled “On n’est pas des pigeons” which therefore tricked the jury of the international wine competition “Gilbert et Gaillard” by modifying the label of a wine range, bought €2.50 at the supermarket.
It was a certain Éric Boschman, voted best sommelier in the country in 1988, who was behind this stroke of genius. The latter thus made the judges believe that this wine was a “ great cuvée ” produced by a fictitious estate called “Château Colombier”.
Presented as “ exceptional ”, this bottle – whose false logo was a… pigeon, in reference to the show – claimed to be the fruit of grape varieties located in Côte de Sambre and Meuse (Wallonia).
And the jury of the competition saw nothing but fire during the blind tasting since it decided to award the gold medal to this piquette.
According to him, this “Château Colombier” benefited in particular from a ” bright garnet red color, with a shy nose combining stone fruit, currants, discreet oak, a suave, nervous and rich mouth with clean young scents which promise a nice complexity ” .
Many compliments for a bottle sold under 3 euros.
Beyond the funny and grotesque nature of this hoax, it has above all revealed to what extent certain wine competitions are sometimes shams.
