I am often asked, usually by skeptical non-wine people, what it is that drew me to make wine a career. It is a two day answer, of course, but I usually resort to the tried and true "the endless learning opportunity as wine is very enjoyable with no knowledge and mind-blowing exciting the more you know." Trite, to be sure, but like most clichés based in truth.

I was thinking of this during a recent tasting I was privileged to take part in on the recently released 2003 vintage of . It is just one of the benefits of placing yourself squarely in the business of wine, you find yourself sitting in front of 80 pre-release Brunellos (I don’t care if Brunelli is correct or not, I won’t use it) with a pen, paper and your palate and your off.

The 2003 vintage in Montalcino was weak at best and the wines showed this clearly across the board. (As an aside, this is a wine recommendation site but I won't swear off the whole vintage, if you have a trusted retailer who claims a particular producer had it right in '03 then go for it, but if you are just perusing a wine list you probably want to fish elsewhere). A failure as a tasting, not even close, I was able to cement pre-conceived notions of what the differences in vineyard sites might bring to the wines and drive home what exactly the off conditions in the weather might do to the wines. This is exactly what we mean by more knowledge opening more and more fascinating little boxes.

So imagine my surprise when I started to read the reports of possible fraud in the wines of Montalcino. My first thought was "Jesus, how much worse would these wines have been if they were unadulterated" but ultimately I was actually shocked that these things are (allegedly) still happening in today's day and age. I realize this is big business and when you establish a wine like Brunello as a major player on the world wine stage you really can't afford a truly bad vintage and the lure of blending in some non-Sangiovese and/or muscular southern Italian wine to balance your offering has to be strong.

And then I thought does it even make a difference? I mean, I tasted through the wines thinking they were all Brunellos and the knowledge that some may have been adulterated really doesn't change my opinion of the wines. Circling back to where we started, the uninitiated surely could care less about such things simply asking that when you plunk down $50 on a bottle of wine it lives up to that expectation.

But it does make a difference. Producers of terroir driven wines need to plan for the inevitable bad vintage and ensure that their "brand" is not damaged by one, two or even three bad vintages in a row. Doctoring the wines may not mean much for every taster but – even undetected – it strips the wine of its true allure, its credibility and ultimately its uniqueness. You are not just saying that you were too weak to face a bleak financial projection you are also saying that your wine can be "assembled" from parts not necessarily from the same grape or location as your wine purportedly comes from.

So, I hope it turns out that this scandal is untrue. But if it turns out to be true I want to be among the first to say, shame.

Robert Scibelli is a lecturer and administrator at New York’s premier wine school, International Wine Center.