"Much is made, for instance, of the cheeky way in which the French fobbed off their worst wine on the Germans while walling up their best for future private consumption; how bottles were relabelled, paperwork fiddled, vintages adulterated, and the Boches taken for a ride. This was, however, just a slightly more patriotic version of normal practice: a French wine label was traditionally a work of fiction, and, historically, there can have been few businesses to rival the French wine trade when it came to professional deceit, product laundering, and general passing off."