The Ministry for Primary Industries has prosecuted a leading New Zealand wine company for deliberate, deceptive and sustained breaches of the Wine Act.
Pleading guilty to a total of 39 charges in the Blenheim District Court today were Yealands Estate Wines Limited, the company’s founder and director at the time of the offending, Peter Yealands, former general manager winery operations, Jeff Fyfe and former chief winemaker Tamra Kelly.
The Company and the three individual defendants were immediately sentenced after their guilty pleas were recorded. Judge Bill Hastings has imposed fines against Yealands Estate Wines Limited of $400,000, Jeff Fyfe of $35,000, Tamra Kelly of $35,000, and Peter Yealands of $30,000.
The charges relate to all parties being complicit in making false statements regarding export eligibility applications, and material omissions in wine records relating to the use of added sugar: a breach of EU market regulation winemaking requirements.
“These are the first convictions for offending under the provisions of the Wine Act in New Zealand,” says Gary Orr, MPI’s Manager of Compliance Investigations. “It is common knowledge in the wine industry that you can’t add sugar post-fermentation to wine destined for the EU market, yet the parties convicted were well aware of what they were doing. Peter Yealands was made aware of what was happening at the time but failed to do anything to stop it.”
The case has been under investigation by MPI for almost two years. The falsified records related to more than 6.5 million litres of wine, and around 3.7 million litres of affected wine was exported to Europe between May 2013 and December 2015.
“The aim of the Wine Act is to give consumers confidence that the products they buy are safe and true to label. These systems are in place to ensure New Zealand’s reputation as a world-leading wine producing nation is upheld.”
