Jacob’s Creek, Australia's largest wine maker and largest exporter, is a recent victim of a counterfeiting scheme in England.  Hundreds of bottles, which normally retail for between £6 and £10 a bottle, have been seized thus far in locations including London, Brighton, Cardiff, and Wales. Jacob’s Creek, a "value" brand owned by the French giant Pernod Ricard, is one of Britain’s top selling wine brands, so identifying the total amount of counterfeited product could prove difficult.

The fake wine is believed to be from China and is being sold to off-licences and independent shops for as little as £2.  As with many wine makers, anti-counterfeiting measures are elusive.  So far "product authentication" has been limited to alerting consumers about telltale signs of the counterfeit bottles. 

To date authorities have identified the Cabernet Sauvignon 2007, Merlot 2009, Semillon Sauvignon Blanc 2008, Chardonnay 2009, and Semillon Chardonnay 2009 as varietals and vintages that have been impacted.

A Trading Standards spokeswoman has stated that “the wine is not harmful” and therefore is unlikely to pose a health risk. The risk to one’s palate is another matter – the same spokesperson also mentioned that the wine is of a “very low quality and substandard taste.” For consumers wishing to avoid an unpleasant experience, officials in England are encouraging people to inspect the lower bottom label on the back of the Jacob’s Creek bottle, which have the spelling mistake “Wine of Austrila”. 

Anyone who may have bought any counterfeit wine is asked to contact Cardiff trading standards on 029 20 87 2059 or email foodfraud@foodstandards.gsi.gov.uk

A elite business badly in need of DNA Authentication

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.

Click here to learn more about brand protection using Signature® DNA.

Until recently, the contents of a glass of wine had only been scrutinized for their oenological merits. Lately however, a spate of highly publicized incidents has brought this crisis of counterfeit and fraudulent wine to public attention. In 1998, bottles of 1990 Penfold’s Grange were revealed to be counterfeit, exhibiting typographical errors and inconsistent printing. Approximately 16,000 bottles of Sassicaia, retailing at $100 to $125 a bottle, were identified as fake and seized in Italy in 2000. But perhaps the most renowned and shocking counterfeiting scandal came to light in 2007, when a lawsuit brought by billionaire wine collector William Koch sparked a widespread federal investigation of several notable auction houses, wine collectors, and importers.

One common method of counterfeiting involves replacing the label of a weaker-vintage wine, such as a 1987 Bordeaux, with a label from the same wine produced in a better vintage, such as 1989. (For example, in the past a Château Le Pin 1989, sold for an average auction price of $2,086, Le Pin 1987 averaged $777.) It's one of the simplest ways to produce phony wines, since counterfeiters can copy a label with a readily available quality scanner and printer. The bogus bottles are then resold on the wine market as genuine and can circulate at retail or auctions for years before anyone suspects something is wrong.

In addition to the outright counterfeiting of fine wine, buyers face another potential problem when assessing the purity of a bottle. To preserve the life of some of their wines, some winemakers will remove the cork from the bottle and blend in a small quantity of wine from a newer vintage in a process known as "reconditioning." Although reconditioned wines may have longer shelf lives, some winemakers try to pass off their reconditioned bottles as purely the older vintage.

The problem has grown large enough that the FBI's art fraud squad has been investigating. Counterfeit wines are estimated to account for as much as five percent of the secondary market (Wine Spectator). For centuries, most wineries made little effort to make sure their wines could not be faked. But now, concerned that customers will lose confidence and stop buying, wineries are exploring ways to make sure future bottles can be authenticated.

When the Roman historian Pliny the Elder wrote "in vino veritas" – in wine, there is truth – he must not have been drinking from a counterfeit bottle.

Using Botanical DNA to Protect Authenticity of Fine Wine

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