There is a kind of arms race between fraudsters and traders: even professionals find it difficult to detect counterfeit wines today. But they are fighting back with high-tech tools and new methods of detection.
There is not always truth in wine. wein.plus repeatedly reports that some suppliers use false indications of origin or quality levels in order to sell wines at a higher price. The situation is different in the premium segment: the incentive to pour cheap wines into empty top-quality bottles or to falsify the labelling of rare wines lies in the high sales prices. The American wine counterfeiter Rudy Kurniawan, who served a seven-year prison sentence, gained international fame. The German rarities dealer Hardy Rodenstock also acquired a dubious reputation. His dispute with US billionaire William Koch was even the subject of the film "The Billionaire's Vinegar", in which Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey plays the leading role. The film is about wines allegedly owned by former US President Thomas Jefferson, for which Koch paid half a million dollars each.
Jessica Dunn is the security expert at Liv-ex.
Liv-exSerious traders have long gone to great lengths to recognise counterfeits. As a result, counterfeiting wine bottles is becoming increasingly complex and expensive to prevent experts from recognising the fraud. This is because the security features are also getting better and better—with holograms, NFC seals and serial numbers, for example. This makes it increasingly difficult to produce good counterfeits. If the effort required by counterfeiters is too high, the fraud hardly pays off for them. Jessica Dunn, security expert at the global fine wine trading platform Liv-ex, explains: "We carefully document the results of every bottle we test. Very important: Does the external appearance correspond to the age? We check the shape and weight of the bottle, the imprints on the base and the appearance of the label: are the fonts, font sizes and colours correct? Are there any language or grammatical errors?" All rarities dealers have been doing this for a long time: a bottle that has been stored in a cellar for decades cannot be clean. The labelling paper will look yellowed, the capsule weathered and deposits should have formed in the bottle. If individual elements of a wine bottle are in different conditions, alarm bells are ringing. "If the front and back labels look different ages, if there are only traces of mould on one label and the condition of the capsule doesn't match, we check all the more closely. Our team is trained to do this. We have developed an algorithm that helps us to recognise counterfeits," says Jessica Dunn. But: "I can't give away all our secrets. A lot of what we do has to remain confidential."
Jan-Erik Paulson: "I have drunk almost all the wines in question."
Paulson Rare WineJan-Erik Paulson is a rare wine dealer in Germany with decades of experience (Paulson Rare Wine). When he checks the bottles on offer, he proceeds as follows: "I examine the bottle with a lamp and check the colour. The 1945 Bordeaux still have a very deep red colour. Wines from hot years such as 1976, on the other hand, show orange tones early on." The fill level also plays a major role, but Paulson says: "For me, the colour of the wine is more important than the fill level." What he does with the torch can be refined with sophisticated technology. Specialists take high-resolution photos, examine the labels under UV light and even work with digital microscopes. Finally, they can examine a bottle using infrared spectroscopy and determine a chemical fingerprint of the wine, which they compare with counter samples. Liv-ex is keeping a close eye on the development of these technologies—and does not rule out their use in the future. However, Jessica Dunn also sometimes consults human expertise in the form of Michael Egan, former director of Sotheby's auction house.
Clemens Riedl: "With a good fake bottle, everything is genuine. Except for the wine."
ready to drinkIf you want to examine the cork more closely, you have to cut open the capsule. This only happens in a few cases. A wine is tasted even more rarely. Only if the seller agrees is a small amount removed with the help of Coravin. Paulson: "I've drunk almost all the wines that would be worth counterfeiting. I know what a particular wine from a particular vintage tastes like." Clemens Riedl and Julius Neubauer from the Austrian fine wine retailer "trinkreif" taste some wines when they review a large collection. "We were recently offered around 1,200 bottles. We opened four of them as random samples. This has to be worth it to the seller."
Riedl emphasises what is most important when buying wines: the credibility of their origin, the reputation of the seller, the story behind the wines. Where do they come from? How did they come into the seller's possession? Is he a real collector, does he have several interesting wines—or did he suddenly "find" a bottle somewhere?
Riedl can tell several anecdotes about how he went to remote private homes to view wine collections. "And then I had to explain to the assembled extended family why I was only buying a few young bottles. That was unpleasant, I wouldn't do it like that today." And he wouldn't take these young bottles with him today either. "If the owners can't plausibly explain to me where they come from, I leave them lying around. I don't want to accuse anyone of anything, but the bottles could have 'fallen off a lorry', purportedly. After all, break-ins in cellars and warehouses are on the increase." This is why expensive wines are now usually sent without delivery documents and the crates are wrapped in black film so that nobody can see what is inside. After all, the retailer must ensure that he does not resell any stolen goods. "Once I became unsure and reported it to the police. However, you can't assume that an officer at the police station will immediately understand what I'm talking about. But Interpol has databases and can cross-check the information. If the wines have not been reported stolen anywhere, they should be okay," explains Riedl.
Reputable dealers know the history of their wines.
Paulson Rare WineA few years ago, the German importer of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC) made headlines. He asked his customers to send him photos of their stock every year, to smash empty bottles and photograph the broken pieces. Riedl understands this: "I also don't like it when guests ask us if they can take an empty bottle with them after a tasting. I know from other retailers that they smash the bottles before throwing them in the recycling container." After all, if you have an original DRC bottle with the original label and serial number, that's not a bad start to a scam. "If you have also taken the original cork, you could use the appropriate criminal energy to try to fill it with another wine and sell the bottle again. All you need is the right capsule." And these are easy to find and buy on the appropriate platforms. Riedl knows of several examples where prominent personalities from wine community with access to these materials have put empty bottles with different contents back into circulation.
According to Riedl, the assessment of just the bottle can therefore be misleading: "It could really be an original bottle." However, the question of what is inside remains unanswered. Julius Neubauer gives an example that Jan-Erik Paulson also knows well. "A few years ago, Sassicaia was sold in absurdly large quantities. The bottles were such good imitations that they could only be traced by the paper in which the individual bottles were wrapped. The grammage of the wrapping paper was different to that of the originals."
But how many really good counterfeit bottles, which professionals cannot detect at first glance, do the retailers surveyed discover each year? Jan-Erik Paulson, for example, sees "extremely few good counterfeits. But the numbers are slowly going up because there are more expensive wines than 30 or 40 years ago." Jessica Dunn explains: "We check around 30,000 bottles a year, and every two to three months there is a good counterfeit. I also hear this from other specialists such as Philip Moulin, the Quality and Authentication Manager at Berry Bros & Rudd. But it's impossible to estimate how many there are worldwide and how great the damage is likely to be." It is best to only buy from a well-known, reputable dealer who has a lot of experience. Clemens Riedl summarises: "With a good counterfeit bottle, everything is genuine. Except for the wine."