MPI prosecutes Yealands Estate Wines for unprecedented offending under NZ Wine Act (MPI Media Release)

Yealands Estate Wines and 3 individual defendants plead guilty to a total of 39 charges after deliberate, deceptive and sustained breaches of the New Zealand Wine Act 2003. In the Blenheim District Court Judge Bill Hastings imposed fines against Yealand Estate Wines Limited of $400,000, Jeff Fyfe of $35,000, Tamara Kelly of $35,000 and Peter Yealands of $30,000. The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) prosecuted parties for being complicit in making statements regarding export eligibility applications and making material omissions in wine records relating to the use of added sugar which constitutes a breach of EU market regulation winemaking requirements. The MPI conducted this investigation over 2 years, finding that one of New Zealand’s leading wine companies engaged in deliberate deception by falsifying records in order to deceive the routine audit. The falsified records related to more than 6.5 million litres of wine and around 3.7 million litres of that that wine was exported to Europe between May 2013 and December 2015. Garry Orr, MPI’s manager of compliance investigations, stated that the parties convicted were well aware of what they were doing and that adding sugar to post fermented wine, designed for sale in the EU market, is a breach of the EU market regulation winemaking requirements. Although there was at no time any risk to human health from the consumption of the Wine, Garry Orr, acknowledge that the incident posed a great risk to New Zealand’s reputation in the Wine industry. Since the offending came to light, Yealand Estates Wine Ltd has change its product processes so that, regardless of the market intended to sell their products, all of its wines meet the EU requirements.