It’s harvest season in the Champagne region of France, and local residents are celebrating. Not only do yields look good, but a scandal that had rocked the strict bubbly business was finally laid to rest this week.
In 2023, Didier Chopin, a 56-year-old French winemaker, was accused of passing off wine made with carbonated grapes from Spain and other regions in France as Champagne. On Tuesday, he was sentenced to prison.
His deception was the ultimate faux pas in an area where the Comité Champagne, a local trade association, dictates a litany of rules on things like the distance between vines to harvest times, and strictly polices business in France and abroad.
“It’s a betrayal; it’s like if you found out your husband was cheating on you,” Cynthia Coutu, a sommelier and Champagne expert in Paris, said by phone of Mr. Chopin’s actions.
The first rule of Champagne is that only producers using local grapes can claim that name. Since 1936, regional growers have received special protection, the “Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée” label, the French mark of a product with a unique identity stemming from its geographical origin. You can buy bubbly from other places, but producers cannot call it “Champagne.”
The label is intended to signal quality and to guarantee that buyers are getting the real thing. The industry shipped more than 270 million bottles of the bubbly last year, generating about 5.8 billion euros, or about $6.75 billion, according to the Comité Champagne.
In Champagne, where “everyone is working so hard to respect the strict rules,” Ms. Coutu said, Mr. Chopin’s deception came as a grave blow. It was seen as a crime that had to be punished.
But the accused fraudster fled France, and justice was, for a time, delayed — until he was summoned back after being jailed in Morocco on other charges.
After a June trial in a court in Reims, France, Mr. Chopin was found guilty of selling hundreds of thousands of bottles of wine worth millions of euros and made with grapes from Spain and other French regions. The court heard that he had added carbonation and aromas to bolster the deception, and claimed the wine was Champagne.
On Tuesday, he was handed not just prison time, but also fines and restrictions on his participation in the winemaking business.
“This exemplary decision sends out a clear message: Champagne is a unique and exceptional wine, which must be protected,” Charles Goemaere, managing director of the Comité Champagne, said in a statement to The New York Times. He added that the deception had been “a serious attack on the common heritage of Champagne winegrowers and houses.”
Mr. Chopin’s lawyer, and the lawyer for the employee of Mr. Chopin’s who had accused him, did not respond to requests for comment. But Mr. Chopin admitted his crimes in court, saying he had “made a mistake,” which “ruined” him, according to news reports.
The resolution came after a long wait for local growers and producers, who were shaken by the scheme. In August 2023, L’Union, a newspaper in Reims, published an article that said Mr. Chopin was affixing the Champagne label to bottles containing grapes from elsewhere.
At the time, Mr. Chopin denied the accusations, and an investigation began. But he left the country and started an agriculture export business in Morocco. He also got into trouble there, according to Moroccan news media and testimony at his trial in France.
In June 2024, the Moroccan news site Hespress reported Mr. Chopin was being held in a local jail on accusations that he had written bad checks.
At his hearing in France on Tuesday, Mr. Chopin’s lawyer asked for a reduced sentenced, citing his client’s seven months of incarceration in Morocco in what the lawyer called “horrible conditions.” Mr. Chopin was ultimately sentenced to four years in prison, two and a half years of which were suspended. He will have to serve 18 months behind bars, French news media reported.
His wife, Karine Chopin-Faye, 56, was also tried. She was sentenced on Tuesday to a two-year suspended sentence, ordered to pay fines and restricted from working in the Champagne industry for at least five years.
Mr. Chopin faces another trial in France in February on charges of customs violations.
The sentencing was cathartic for the Champagne region, which is made up of about 34,000 hectares, or nearly 85,000 acres, and contains more than 300 villages where grapes are produced and sold. The fake bubbly scheme was a rarity — there does not appear to have been any other such cases, experts say.
Mr. Chopin’s product was basically a “sort of luxury SodaStream,” as the prosecutor put it in court on Monday, according to L’Union.
Mr. Chopin’s sentencing comes as the industry is dealing with tariff woes and reeling from accusations of human trafficking. The case also compounded concerns among growers and producers, who have been asking, Ms. Coutu said, “What is Champagne becoming?”
“Champagne has a reputation to uphold,” she said. “It’s the ultimate celebratory wine, and it’s associated with luxury. A case like this tarnishes that image.”
Ephrat Livni is a Times reporter covering breaking news around the world. She is based in Washington.
The post French Winemaker Gets Prison for Scheme That Threatened the Champagne Bubble appeared first on New York Times.
