FALSIFICATIONS ARRIVE AT THE SELECT WORLD OF WINE

Most of the objects of consumption and the most prestigious brands are faked daily in the black market. In fact, according to the last data of Interpol 6% of the total of goods that are consumed in the world are false. And is not only on imitations of purses of Gucci nor of Rolex watches, since the sector of select wines has also become one of its high-priority objectives.

Just as art, wine of high quality has much demand between the investors of Asia, the Anglo-Saxon countries, and South America. But, unlike pictorial works, in the wine sector there is no official register. It is, therefore, impossible to authenticate the wine once is bottled, unless the cork is taken off.

The wine falsifications occur on different scales, from dedicated networks to imitate a wine with Denomination of Origin, to those that decide on select wines of collection to obtain a greater margin of benefit. Thus, bottles of some of the best wines of Bordeaux are falsified, as the Chateau Petrus (a wine of a harvest as the one of 1982 the bottle goes up to around the 2,500 euros) and other select wines like the Grange of Australia and the Sassicaia of Italy, that cost from 415 to 1,240 the bottles of the most wanted harvests.

It is, without a doubt, of a stealthy battle fought by the owners of wine cellars for decades, that had been complicated due to the irruption of new technologies in the falsification techniques. The producing sector does not wish, therefore, to seed doubts between the wine collectors that pay great sums for bottles that are very looked for. And they do not want either to publish the way in which the cheaters make their work.

The first falsifications were limited to fill up the empty bottles with wine of less quality and to display them opened in the table. Nevertheless, as time goes by, falsification methods have been improved. Now, with an appropriate cork provision, a suitable software to print the labels and bottles, imitations are sealed within the boxes. In addition, it is possible that the buyer does not open those wines in many years, delaying the discovery of the falsification. And that, by all means, in case that the buyer can notice the difference.

However, diverse possibilities exist to fight against this fraud, from exclusive labels made of bubble with a special transparent resin that forms blisters impossible to duplicate in the drawings, up to the paper with characteristics of security like those of banknotes or inimitable holography that allow to track each bottle up to the retail salesman and which allow to identify if it is the original product or if, on the contrary, has been replaced by a false one.