Cafes in tourist areas of Paris have been caught covertly pouring cheap wine in place of the premium glasses paid for by diners.
An investigation by Le Parisien newspaper found that wine fraud is rife in the French capital, with tourists often being the victims.
The outlet claims cafes are replacing fancy wines with budget alternatives. They discovered the fraud when sending two sommeliers to taste out the deception while pretending to be tourists.
Of the wine ordered by the glass, investigators said that a pour of chablis or sancerre at around €9 (£7.65) was substituted for a sauvignon, the cheapest wine on the menu at around €5 (£4.25).
One of the undercover sommeliers, wine merchant Marina Giuberti, found a €7.50 sancerre had been replaced by a cheaper sauvignon priced at €5.60, but she was charged the higher rate.
After complaining, the waiter brought her another glass of the wrong wine.
Giuberti said: “It’s a pity for the customer and for the image of the wine appellation, for the winemaker and for the restaurant owners who do a good job.”
Staff at brasseries and cafes in Paris confirmed that the practice is often encouraged by bosses looking to maximise their profits.
Sarah, a waitress with 30 years of experience working in restaurants, told Le Parisien: “I might put leftover wine in a single bottle for happy hour, or replace Bardolino with Chianti, which is much cheaper and tastes completely different.”
The “repotting” technique involves switching out the wine a customer has ordered with the contents of a more budget bottle.
A former employee of a Montmartre brasserie, Tristan, added that staff were “told off by the owner if the most expensive bottle went down too quickly”, and only once did a sommelier customer discover the ruse.
According to the hospitality worker, aside from French locals, “all other customers were getting ripped off”.
He said: “When I saw American tourists arriving on the terrace, I knew they were going to be had.”
Experts told Le Parisien that, by law, customers can insist on having wine poured from the bottle in front of them with the label visible.
Jérôme Bauer, Alsace winemaker and leader of the National Confederation of AOC (appellation contrôlée), told the outlet: “Cheating the customer rebounds on us, the producers, because a customer who has ordered a Côte du Rhône and gets served a Bordeaux wine will probably be disappointed and can turn away from that wine in the future.”
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