Whining About Wine – Part II Lucrative “Recycling” Efforts.
On the surface, it sounds like it’s good for the environment. You take the glass containers and refill them – just like in olden times when the milkman came to your door – recycle, reduce, reuse. But there’s a bit of a dishonest twist when it comes to wine. You pick up a vintage bottle that once held a very expensive wine, fill with something other than that, and you’ve got a very desirable wine collection in no time. And excellent vintage bottles are easy to find. I recently went onto eBay and under search terms I entered “empty wine bottles”. I came up with almost 60 matches offering empty wine bottles ranging in price from under $1 to over $50. Some of the bottles being offered were quite specific - a bottle of 1994 Grace Family Vineyards Cabernet, a bottle 1995 Tignanello Red Blend from Tuscany, and a bottle of 1996 Screaming Eagle, all empty.
The bottles mentioned above together may sell for between $10 and $60 on eBay when empty. Filled up again with some red wine, re-corked and re-foiled, these three wines could sell for a total of about $2224, according to WinePrices.Com. An attractive mark up for a counterfeiter!
So why this curiosity for empty wine bottles? I ran across a blog titled “Do We Have eBay to Thank for all That Counterfeit Wine?” and I was intrigued. An ongoing study is looking at this issue and so far the results would lead one to believe that empty wine bottles are being bought, refilled and fraudulently sold. American Association of Wine Economists.
Another example that seems to support this theory of refilling empty bottles is that Château Mouton-Rothschild bottles, designed by a different prominent artist for each vintage, are being sold for less than other presumably less collectible but more easily counterfeitable bottles. One might assume that these bottles, when empty — since they’re limited-edition works of art — would have higher value than other empty bottles if they were really being collected for legitimate purposes - but I suspect they’re not!
The notion of refilling wine bottles is both intriguing and frightening. It goes to show that given any opportunity, counterfeiters will act. Much like a proactive environmental protection effort can help create a positive space for living, a proactive approach to brand protection creates a fertile business environment, driven by quality, customer satisfaction, and, above all, customer safety.
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