Yes, Brodie Thompson posted a link to a story on that case in the other recent thread on fake wines:
It’s not counterfeit, but it’s fake in another sense – what the producer put in the bottles wasn’t what was indicated on the labels.
It is counterfeit John.
Counterfeit Wine is any wine which is different that it purports to be by its label, including:
- Wrong or misstated origin, varietal or blend, or vintage as put forth by the producer or bottler
- A Recreated counterfeit that is expressly made by a counterfeiter to look like another wine that was once made
- A Unicorn wine, which is made by a counterfeiter to look like a fine and rare wine that was in fact never made by the producer due to size, vintage, vineyard or some other detail or combinations thereof (Ponsot Clos St Denis prior to 1982. Marey Monge DRC bottlings prior to the mid 1960’s…)
- IP Infringement as we see all over Asia where Penfolds is sold as “Penfiods” and Petrus become “Pacurs”…
- Adulteration Bottles that have had additions including: methanol (which killed people in - Bulgaria was it- just last year, and many people in Italy in 1986) diethylene glycol…
- Then there are of course all the wines from China that actually contain no grape product at all…
I’m not sure I’d use the word in this case because, in one sense, the wine is what it says it is: the product that that producer intended to be in that bottle. A counterfeit is an imitation, and I’m not sure this is an imitation.
This is quite different from the kind of fraud you specialize in, and it’s worth distinguishing the two types.
I also think it’s overbroad to call an adulterated wine counterfeit or one that has a name similar to a famous name.
But it’s really a matter of semantics.
It seems that cheap, Chinese wines are being faked:
https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2017/08/6000-bottles-of-fake-wine-busted-in-china/
I thought it was generally accepted that the percentage of $2.00 wine in China is actually more likely to be counterfeit than even DRC in China, which is somewhat hard to imagine.
RomaniCandy! That’s precious. I needed a good mid-day laugh.
The name sounds like durian candy. That’s what i bought at the Hanoi airport. Endless giggles presenting it to unsuspecting in-laws and Barb from accounting.
Leaving wine (and baby formula, and pet food, and dog chews) completely out of it there are so many horror stories about China manufacturing I’d have to learn to touch type to tell them.
Oops. Forgot why I came. Chinese police find 14,000 bottles of fake Penfolds wine in counterfeiting scam