Wakefield company misled customers with ‘skinny prosecco’

A man from Wakefield has been fined for selling “skinny” prosecco that had too much sugar in it.

Marcus Hilton, 45, director of Prosecco 1754 Ltd, admitted selling a misleading product ahead of his sentencing at Leeds Crown Court on Friday.

Mr Hilton and the company had each been charged with two counts of breaching the Food Safety Act 1990.

Prosecco 1754 Ltd was fined £2,700 plus £2,000 in court costs, while Mr Hilton was fined £1,400 plus £2,000 in court costs.

Ayman Khokhar, prosecuting on behalf of West Yorkshire Trading Standards, said Prosecco 1754’s website offered a low-calorie form of the alcoholic drink for sale, “the presentation of which was likely to mislead”.

The company also offered for sale Skinny Prosecco Rose 1754, which was the subject of the same charge.

Judge Thomas Bayliss said: “The prosecco has got too much sugar in it, more than it should have.”

The court heard that in May 2019, Trading Standards officer Zafar Shah visited the company premises in Wakefield to follow up a complaint made regarding the “skinny” branded products being sold online.

Mr Shah took samples and a report concluded that the Skinny Prosecco sample and its description on the company website breached food and drink regulations.

Mr Khokhar said that the law to market a product as “reduced” requires a 30% reduction in energy content.

However the “skinny” sample only had a 6.6% reduction.

Mr Shah sent an infringement report to the company requesting that the term skinny was removed from the name of the product, but as of December 2021 no changes had been made.

On 7 July 2022, Mr Hilton admitted the breaches, describing them as “an oversight”.

Mr Khokhar said: “Trading Standards did not say that anyone’s health was put at risk but there could have been a diabetic consume them.

“That’s the only risk, other than those who wanted to get slim for their summer holidays.”

The judge said this customer was “hypothetical” and there was no evidence of anyone being put at risk.

He said: “Skinny Prosecco turned out to be not so skinny, and you knew it was not so skinny and yet you continued selling it for quite some time.”

David Strover, head of Trading Standards, said: “We repeatedly advised this business to amend their labelling, but they were intransigent and failed to act on our advice.”

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