You couldn't make it up!!

Shouldn't do it really but a sick child is eating most of my time at the moment. Saw this in the Western Morning News today:

Click here for article

I have never liked the BNP much or any of their ilk for that matter but this is utterly brilliant.

Apologies again for the blatant copyright infringement...

THE 'BRITISH' WINE USING GRAPES FROM CHILE

The far-right British National Party is having its own brand "British" wine produced in Cornwall - using grapes imported from Chile. The extremist party is having the wine produced by a wholesale company co-owned by Peter Mullins, a failed parliamentary candidate for the party.

Yesterday his business partner Phil Powell defended the wine's right to call itself British and claimed the region - which has produced several internationally-acclaimed wines - does not produce enough good grapes for the wine. His comments, and the wine he produces, were ridiculed yesterday by one of the region's top wine-makers and politicians.

Mr Powell insisted the wine, made by their firm Cornish Moorland Wines, at Bolventor, North Cornwall, is legitimately British.

"It is not Chilean wine - it is British wine," he said. "Any wine produced in Britain using grapes imported from anywhere in the world is British."

The wine is for sale on the BNP website for £100 per 12-bottle case, though only for British buyers. Foreigners have to pay extra.

On the BNP website, the wine is described as "containing 12 bottles of exclusive Cornish-produced wine, with Nick Griffin BNP artwork decorating each bottle".

It comes in bottles whose labels show party leader Griffin making a two-fingered "V for Victory" salute with the slogan "Drink for Britain with the BNP".

It makes no mention of the Chilean origin of the grapes used to make the wine. Mr Powell, who is not a member of the BNP, defended the sourcing of the grapes, claiming they only use the best available and that they would take grapes from wherever in the world had a good year.

"The wine has to be of the same quality all the time," he said. "We cannot do that with local grapes."

This view was called "a sham" by one of the region's award-winning wine producers, Bob Lindo, who owns the Camel Valley Vineyard, near Bodmin.

The vineyard was awarded the 2005 International Wine Challenge Gold Medal, Britain's only gold and the only one in the whole world for a sparkling wine from outside Champagne.

He derided the wine, saying those which are labelled as British are inferior quality.

"Wines labelled Cornish or English have to be made using British grapes, the Cornish wine industry is recognised internationally," he said. "The British-labelled wine industry is a laughing stock. The wine must be made from grape concentrate, Chilean grapes would be in a poor state by the time they got here."

Cornwall Trading Standards said yesterday that it was perfectly legal to call wine made from foreign grapes British if it was manufactured in this country.



The rip off c n p job looks a bit weird. Buy the paper if only for the photo of the wine bottle itself. Would you pay top-dollar for a bottle of dodgy plonk with a v-flicking fascist on the label?