Parting with Red Bicyclette pinot noir this past week -- hmmm, I’d say not so sweet a sorrow for California producer E&J Gallo. More like an aggrieved sorrow, like the kind you feel after the ex-boyfriend who dumped you earnestly asks, “can we be friends?” -- and then feigns righteous indignation (!) when you respond with a polite version of, “go to hell.” It was once a perfect affair -- the French-grown Red Bicyclette was great arm candy, looking all pretty and commercially perfect sitting in those wine store stacks, while Gallo on the other hand made millions (seven to be exact, and that’s in euros not dollars) selling it to American consumers. But the romance is now officially over. The Red Bicyclette brand was publicly guillotined for its phony pinot, and Gallo understandably doesn’t want to stay friends. As if to avoid some tragic double suicide, à la Roméo et Juliette, the winery has taken the “Tiger Woods” route in an effort to put as much distance as possible between the Gallo name and the PR firestorm. It’s easy: release a lame statement and then hide under the covers in hopes that the story eventually blows over. And for the most part it has. No paparazzi, or further questions about the role they or their supliers played in the scandal; nothing since last week’s court ruling. Surprising, I mean people are still talking about O.J. and it’s been, like, 15 years.  

Anyway, I guess we can call this scandal part of the Sideways effect. Consumers might not know what true pinot noir tastes like, according to what Dr. Vino heard on Marketplace Morning Report last week -- but they do know that they 1) like whatever wine calls itself pinot and 2) want it to be as cheap as possible, even if basic laws of supply and demand make “cheap pinot” an oxymoron. That’s where $9 pinot from Red Bicyclette comes in. 

“They want to have their cake and eat it too?” suppliers asked rhetorically. “Well, then, let them eat cake!” 

But the French fraud agency, noticing a discrepancy between the amount of pinot noir being produced and the amount of pinot being sold, stormed the gates leading to the guilty wine cooperatives and their conspirators. At stake: the French wine industry’s honor and reputation, especially under the gaze of the U.S., their #1 frenemy. The punishment: a beheading where it really hurts -- no, not there, but rather their wallet. 

And so the story goes of how a few French suppliers almost got away with passing off the equivalent of 18 million bottles of lower-cost wine as pinot noir.  

I never fell for the Red Bicyclette trap. I don’t know, just something about the label -- maybe the bicycle, or the perfect loaves of bread, or the precious dog, or the beret. I don’t know, something about it spelled inauthenticity. It was so flawless at pandering to a stereotype that it was just fake, kind of like the Real Housewives of Orange County. 

False labeling isn’t just a challenge for the wine industry. Fox reported a couple nights ago how two New York City high schoolers used DNA testing to uncover mislabeled food items from cheese to dog food. So I guess it’s buyer beware; that sturgeon caviar and Burgundy could just be cheap Mississippi paddle fish eggs and Red Bicyclette.