THE owner of Clavering Supermarket has been fined £1,000 after selling fake wine.
Harlow magistrates also made an order to pay £500 costs after they were told that Muru Visana had paid £2,500 for the “Australian” wine from someone he thought was from a reputable cash and carry business.
The “branded” boxes were delivered to his shop in Stortford Road and he sold some to customers before the remainder – 83 cases - were seized from his stock room.
At the time, in May last year, parts of the UK were being flooded with the fake wine from China, the court heard.
The bottles, which had the word Australia spelled incorrectly on the back, did not contain anything harmful, such as methanol, but it was poor quality and the alcohol content was lower.
Essex Trading Standards, which prosecuted Mr Visana's company, Clavering Supermarket Ltd, said their officers found this counterfeit wine around the county, but this was an unusually high number of bottles.
The company pleaded guilty to: possessing for sale 455 bottles of wine bearing a false trademark on May 5 last year; a similar charge relating to 23 bottles which were on the shelves inside the shop; and failing to be able to identify where the 478 bottles had come from.
The last offence relates to an EU regulation designed to trace a product back to its source. Mr Visana only had a handwritten receipt for the wine and the name Barking Cash & Carry. The company had not traded since 1998 and the VAT number didn't exist.
In addition to the fine and legal costs, the magistrates also ordered that the wine that was seized should be destroyed.
