Flooded with Fake Wines!
Alcohol, Miscellaneous, Trends and Insights — By Matt on October 28, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Have you heard the rumors about fake wine in China?
At least in Shanghai, it’s hard to walk a block and not see a wine store. Eventually, you start to wonder about possible quality control issues. Is this little shack of a wine store really selling “authentic” French product?
So today we at enoVate wanted to learn a little more about wine in China.
One report, back in 2004, seems to have sparked all of this attention. According to a survey by the China National Administration for Industry and Commerce, more than 70% of “imported” wines sold in restaurants and hotels in the Beijing, Shenyang, Chengdu and Zhengzhou were found to be fake. 70%!
More recently in 2007, The Shanghai Academy of Sciences reported that more than half of all wines in Shanghai were counterfeit.
Clearly a lot of those wines you see for sell are not what the label says they are.
But what makes a fake wine?
Most products are in fact just wine produced in China and poured into bottles with counterfeit foreign labels. Many alcoholic beverages (whisky, beer, vodka,etc) are similarly faked.
But some inexpensive “wines” may not even be wine at all. In a recent report, Chinese investigators discovered that many wines consisted of little more than water, pigment and alcohol, with trace amounts of grape juice.
Here is an interesting case of one counterfeit producer in Guangzhou. Makes you wonder how many times you have had a glass of something similar.
Read here about Canada’s troubles with the industry.
China has certainly been stepping up enforcement. The problem, however, is clearly ingrained in the industry and not likely to disappear anytime soon. Technology may help though. Here is a list of some of the latest techniques to help fight counterfeiting.
Here too is another interesting technique.
enoVate will keep an eye on this industry. We will also now suspect most wines we imbibe….
Tags: Alcohol, alcohol in china, research, Trends and Insights, wine, wine industry
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2 Comments
Dear Matt, thank you for your articel and hints.
But, “latest techniques” to help fight counterfeits, are mostly jokes in China. Most of the techniques (such as holograms; IT-based a.c.’s) can be well cracked in China, and for some others, there is no obvious authenification possible for consumers(!).
Our comp. is expert in anti-counterfeiting for pharmaceutical products. The question of ‘authentification’ of “wine” is quite similar.
I’d like to add, that the only way of making a product save in the market, is a step-by-step control in supply-chain, including a mix of anti-counterfeiting features, which are partly visible for consumers, and partly only made for (undercover) market investigators.
Plus, detailed documentations(!) and a.c. timely switches by producers, as well as data-storage by reliable associations for poss. forensic proofs.
Biggest problem over all: What, if the customers in a market gives a damn about “real” or “faik”.
I realized, that, when it comes to “(grape-)wine” in China, most important is to “give, or show face”. The quality is -not seldom- an irrelevant matter in the consumer market. It’s just “chique” to serve “a” (branded) wine.
Additionally, the policy to controll the wine market, as well as the state strategic market “improvement” is counterproductively, while encouraging “national big-brands”.
Local quality wine-makers are facing harsh cutthroat competition from these (state-nominated) “big-brands”. They will not allow such rivalry.
Kindest regards,
M.S.