Two established wineries have accused a competitor, Delicata, of bottling Italian wine and passing it off as Maltese.

Delicata directors charged with fraud

The allegation has seen the directors of Delicata charged with fraud.

Vincent Delicata, 65, and his two sons, Mario, 36 and Michael 34, all from Attard, are pleading not guilty to mislabelling their products on and before April 2012.

The former head of the Viticulture Department, Gilbert Camilleri, testified yesterday he had received a report through the then permanent secretary at the Rural Affairs Ministry, Chris Ciantar, through which Marsovin and Camilleri Wines accused Delicata of mislabelling their products.

The charge was that Delicata were selling Maltese wine when the bottles contained Italian produce, Mr Camilleri said.

Cross-examined by lawyer Giannella de Marco, Mr Camilleri said he was the only employee in the department at the time and had left just as the investigation into the report got under way.

He said that, after receiving the report, he went to Pavi supermarket, bought six bottles of Delicata wine and then shipped four of them to an Italian company in Sienna for testing.

However, since he left the office shortly afterwards he did not have the results in hand.

Mr Camilleri said that normal procedure dictated that, when a winery bought Maltese grapes, the department would know how much wine could be produced from the harvest.

Labels printed by the department determining the DOK (Denominazzjoni ta’ Oriġini Kontrollata), the quality of the wines and their region of provenance, as defined by European Union regulations, were then given to the winery to place on the bottles.

When the certification arrived from Italy that the wine was fit to drink, he would issue the certification that it was Maltese wine.

The witness said that, in the case of Delicata, everything always added up and they never had any problems when he worked at the department in 2011.

Asked whether there was a database of Maltese wines and grapes, he said that, according to EU regulations, there should be one.

Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit asked Mr Camilleri whether someone would be able to tell the difference between Maltese and Italian grapes and he replied that was possible for a person who knew his business.

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