The champagne cases

Whether to toast a New Year, a wedding or sports victory, champagne has come to symbolise joy. Sadly, the drink of celebration has also been turned criminal.

Sinister sparkling

Eight years after Agatha Christie used potassium cyanide spiked champagne as a weapon in Sparkling Cyanide, a real-life double homicide case featuring the same deadly cocktail hit US newspapers in December 1953. Though the killings had occurred in August 1953, it took a falling out between co-conspirators to set investigators’ sights on the culprits.

Harlow Fraden, who graduated from New York University with a chemistry degree, invited his parents to celebrate his new job with a champagne toast. Except there was no new job. It was a fake celebration for real crime. 

Fraden reportedly prepared his parents a cocktail of champagne and bitters, with the latter to cover up changes to the bubbly’s colour due to the addition of potassium cyanide from a vial in his pocket. He poured plain champagne for himself. Shortly after their celebratory toast, his parents collapsed to the floor and Fraden called his co-conspirator and roommate, Dennis Wepman, into the room. An officer would later report that Wepman revealed that Fraden’s ‘father attempted to get up and Harlow, to make certain they were dead, poured cyanide down their open mouths’. The co-conspirators allegedly did their best to make it all appear to be a dual suicide by disposing of the third champagne glass, arranging the vial of potassium cyanide alongside the champagne and bitters, and ‘discovering’ the parents’ bodies two days later. The medical examiner and the police were disinclined to accept a suicide pact, but evidence pointing elsewhere was absent. That is, until Fraden and Wepman fell out and Wepman started talking. Soon both were in custody and confessing.

Wepman’s purported confession to investigators pointed toward a financial motive, which seem to align with Fraden being his parents’ heir and his lavish spending after their deaths. Fraden’s statement disavows a money motive and allegedly explained the killings were because his ‘mother had chided him as abnormal as long as he could recall, and before he knew anything about sex’. Some contemporary case coverage printed the derogatory term for a gay man allegedly used by Fraden’s mother. This family tragedy would see Fraden declared insane and committed to New York’s Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he reportedly died by suicide in 1960. Wepman was found sane and sentenced to 20 years to life.

Menacing mousseux

Roughly a month into 2022, a group of eight friends in Weiden in der Oberpfalz, Germany went out to celebrate the lifting of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. After enjoying other libations, a three litre bottle of Moët & Chandon Ice Impérial was ordered and a group toasting video uploaded to social media. Soon after ingesting their first bit of bubbly, the friends were on the ground, seriously ill and in pain. Medical intervention saw seven of the friends recover, but one did not survive. His death and his friends’ illness was not due to Moët & Chandon but the stimulant 3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine (MDMA).

Unbeknown to anyone present, the bottle of champagne delivered to the friends had been previously opened, adulterated, and re-corked. Reportedly, the MDMA flattened the champagne’s bubbles, changed its colour from ‘deep gold with amber highlights’ to reddish-brown, and its odour from tropical fruits to smelling like anise. Consumers may simply not have noticed these changes prior to drinking for a variety of reasons, including possibly being unfamiliar with the product in its standard state.

The champagne delivered to the friend group was definitely not in its standard state. Analysis of the contaminated champagne revealed it contained 1000 times the MDMA found in a single MDMA tablet, which on average contains between 60-120mg of MDMA. In rats – which often serve as a model species for humans^1,2 – the LD50 (the dose required to kill 50% of animals exposed to it) of MDMA is 49 mg/kg.

Rather than this being a maniacal attempt to mass poison champagne drinkers, a multinational investigation would reveal a baffling attempt at drug trafficking. While a range of drugs have been smuggled within a variety of products – including coffee, chocolate and coconut water – there is typically far tighter control on the resulting drug product. The MDMA-spiked Moët & Chandon Ice Impérial bottles were reportedly sold to unsuspecting consumers at the market price of the champagne, not the far more expensive price of the quantity of MDMA it contained. Back in 2022, bottles from two lots of this champagne were found to be spiked with MDMA, leading to a recall and numerous alerts across Europe, with other incidents of illness documented. Two arrests have resulted since the poisoning in Germany, with charges including organised trafficking, negligent homicide and bodily harm.

Bogus bubbly

Across the global wine industry, significant economic harm results from counterfeit products – including champagne and other sparkling varieties.^3–5 A recent review in Trends in Food Science & Technology showcased how a myriad of analytical techniques integrated with chemometrics tools is combating wine fraud.³ Solid-phase microextraction coupled to gas chromatography-mass spectrometry method paired with partial least squares discriminant analysis was able to classify by origin 35 commercially available champagnes, cavas and sparkling Andalusia wines by their terpene profiles.^3,6 Toward proving provenance and pinpointing origin, isotope analysis continues to grow in use for a range of investigations – including wine origin.⁴ Evaluation of strontium (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) and lead (²⁰⁸Pb/²⁰⁶Pb) isotopic ratios enabled researchers to separate certified champagne wines from other sparkling wines to guard against one bubbly posing as another.

Champagne can be turned criminal, but it remains a symbol of celebration and possibility. Perhaps Marlene Dietrich summarised champagne best: ‘It gives you a Sunday feeling, and better days seem just around the corner.’