Overenthusiastic French vignerons have a weakness for declaring their latest vintage to be "the wine of the century." Thus when 18 Bordeaux wine merchants and brokers, plus one laboratory chemist, went on trial late last month on charges of selling fraudulently labeled wine, the scandal was inevitably pronounced "the wine trial of the century." That may be a slightly extravagant claim; commenting on the scandal, a London Sunday Times cartoon showed a more restrained British wine-taster savoring the events and declaring, "not a great trial but an interesting one." Nonetheless, the episode has proved an embarrassment to France's...
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