According to report of Wine-searcher, Australia has come up with an Internet-based system you can use to check the authenticity of wines exported from Down Under!
The idea is to create a database of legitimate brand labels. Whenever you see an Australian wine in a store, you can use that database to check if it really was legally exported.
One might think that this is aimed at China and is a little late, as punishing tariffs imposed by China on Australian wines have nearly halted exports to the point that Penfolds is now making wines in South Africa for the Chinese market.
But Rachel Triggs, general manager of corporate affairs and regulations for Wine Australia, said that while copycat brands in the Chinese market have been a problem, they're not the only fake wine brands on the world market.
"It tends to be at the premium end. It tends to be brands that are already really well established," Triggs told Wine-Searcher. "But we do also see it with brands that are just entering the market. That's a huge problem for those brand owners. It detracts from their market share."
In fact, two years ago Penfolds won a $375,000 court judgment against a company that had been selling wine called "Rush Rich", which is a loose translation of "Ben Fu", the characters Penfolds uses to sell its wine in China. In this case, the copycatting was coming from inside the house, as the Rush Rich wine company was making its copycat wines in Adelaide and shipping them to China.
In 2017, Shanghai police seized 14,000 bottles of counterfeit Penfolds wine.
Unfortunately, this new system will not prevent counterfeiting. If someone can make a very realistic looking Runrig Shiraz-Viognier label, the database will not detect it.
But many counterfeit labels aren't that well-made: they might have the vintage in the wrong spot, or use the wrong-sized font. In that case you might spot the discrepancy by checking the database.
Moreover, people who followed the Hardy Rodenstock saga know that sometimes counterfeiters create vintages that don't exist: maybe a Penfolds Block 42 Cabernet Sauvignon from a vintage where the company didn't make one. The database would quickly dissuade you of the notion of buying that.
編輯：Frida Xu
