BUSINESS ABROAD: End of a Bad Mixer

To the noble wines of West Germany’s Rhineland, Valentin Korn, 44, added a sour grape. For mixing water, sugar, grape juice and drugstore chemicals to make 1,500,000 quarts of such famed wines as Liebfraumilch and Niersteiner Domthal, Korn was jailed (TIME, Sept. 9) and charged with defrauding customers of more than $500,000. Last week at Korn’s trial, industry experts testified that Korn had made Germans so wary of wine that he helped to cut i liter per capita from German wine consumption last year. “The faith of the entire world in German wines has been shaken to the depths,” the prosecutor told the three judges.

In full agreement, the judges harshly sentenced Korn to 30 months at hard labor, usually meted out in Germany only to habitual criminals and traitors. They also banned Korn from winemaking for five years, ordered him to pay $22,600 in back taxes and fines. His bookkeeper got ten months; an assistant drew five months. Bristled one wine-loving judge: “Two hundred years ago, this would have cost Korn his life.”