With its growing wealth, China is turning to the finer things in life, like a bottle of Bordeaux.
Wine consumption has grown by 16 percent in past three years, making China the ninth-largest wine-drinking country in the world in 2010, according to the Wine Institute, a wine advocacy group based in California.
But as China’s appetite for wine increases, so do the prices — and the chances for wine fraud.
The price of a bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild, considered one of the finest Bordeaux in the world, increased 574 percent, according to Lucas Botebol, who writes about the Chinese wine market on his site Zhongguo-wine.com.
And wine merchants believe more than 70 percent of all Lafite bottles sold in China are fake, according to the magazine China International Business.
“The Far East has for the last five years been the major source for buyers of valuable wines,” said William Edgerton, a wine appraiser based in Darien, Conn. “Even poor vintages go for $500 to $600 a bottle, and sooner or later those bottles are going to be emptied and they are going to be perfect targets for counterfeiters.”
Those empty bottles can be sold to counterfeiters, who then fill up the bottles with a different wine and sell it to gullible consumers at Lafite prices, Edgerton added.
The scourge of counterfeiting — once an issue associated with centuries-old vintages — is becoming a worldwide nuisance to buyers of both young and old wine (as well as cheap brands) everywhere.
In September, the Trading Standards Institute in Britain recovered 40 bottles of fake Jacob’s Creek wine from a liquor store in Nottinghamshire, England. The wine is believed to have been made in China and sold at a low rate to independent liquor stores.
In all, nearly 500 bottles of fake affordable wine have been recovered from liquor shops throughout England this year, said Jeremy Beadles, chief executive of the Wine and Spirits Trade Association. “We’re still seeing very basic errors in terms of spelling mistakes on bottles and screw caps that quite obviously have been reattached,” he said.
The growing appetite for Bordeaux makes it one of the most appealing brands for wine fraud across the globe, said Michael Egan, director of authenticity at Bordeaux Winebank, a France-based firm that uses its own five-star rating system to authenticate Bordeaux wines. “I have seen a considerable amount of Château Petrus 1982, sadly, as counterfeit,” said Egan.
A bottle of 1982 Château Petrus can sell for as much as $60,000 at Sotheby’s.
In June, Edgerton held a tasting of 12 magnums of Bordeaux — some dated as old as 1945 — with an estimated worth of $200,000, had they been genuine. Edgerton said that there was enough visual evidence, such as the cork from the magnum of a 1945 Château Mouton-Rothschild, to spot wine fraud for all 12 bottles. “The 1945 cork — the 5 is scratched out and it looks like a 6 was there,” said Edgerton.
Once the bottles were opened, Edgerton spotted another throwaway clue. “Some of it tasted like battery acid,” he said.
“The problem [of counterfeit wine] is real, and it definitely has the potential to get considerably worse,” said Marc Lazar, a St. Louis-based wine counselor who runs Cellar Advisors. Lazar has weeded out phony versions of young fine wines (like a 2005 Rayas Châteauneuf du Pape and a 2000 Lafite Rothschild) from the cellars of his clients, he said. “Not being a technical expert in printing or glassmaking, the stuff looks really good. It’s much harder to detect,” Lazar said.
In China, counterfeiters have been known to forge bottles of Château Latour and Domaine De La Romanée-Conti. “You think it’s the real one, except that inside you have grape juice, alcohol and sugar,” Botebol said.
Such advances in counterfeiting has lead wine producers like Screaming Eagle, a vineyard in Oakville, Calif., to include discrete elements on each bottle to assure customers that their wine is authentic. “We know that we’re easy targets. There is so much money at stake that we are careful,” said Armand de Maigret, the estate manager for Screaming Eagle.
But don’t fret, oenophiles: Experts say that less than 5 percent of all wine sold in auction houses or on the secondary market is fraudulent. “The vast majority, an overwhelming majority [of wine] is perfectly fine,” he said.
Click here to view our Fake Vintage tips, including how to avoid frequently counterfeited wines
Wine consumption has grown by 16 percent in past three years, making China the ninth-largest wine-drinking country in the world in 2010, according to the Wine Institute, a wine advocacy group based in California.
But as China’s appetite for wine increases, so do the prices — and the chances for wine fraud.
The price of a bottle of Château Lafite Rothschild, considered one of the finest Bordeaux in the world, increased 574 percent, according to Lucas Botebol, who writes about the Chinese wine market on his site Zhongguo-wine.com.
And wine merchants believe more than 70 percent of all Lafite bottles sold in China are fake, according to the magazine China International Business.
“The Far East has for the last five years been the major source for buyers of valuable wines,” said William Edgerton, a wine appraiser based in Darien, Conn. “Even poor vintages go for $500 to $600 a bottle, and sooner or later those bottles are going to be emptied and they are going to be perfect targets for counterfeiters.”
Those empty bottles can be sold to counterfeiters, who then fill up the bottles with a different wine and sell it to gullible consumers at Lafite prices, Edgerton added.
The scourge of counterfeiting — once an issue associated with centuries-old vintages — is becoming a worldwide nuisance to buyers of both young and old wine (as well as cheap brands) everywhere.
In September, the Trading Standards Institute in Britain recovered 40 bottles of fake Jacob’s Creek wine from a liquor store in Nottinghamshire, England. The wine is believed to have been made in China and sold at a low rate to independent liquor stores.
In all, nearly 500 bottles of fake affordable wine have been recovered from liquor shops throughout England this year, said Jeremy Beadles, chief executive of the Wine and Spirits Trade Association. “We’re still seeing very basic errors in terms of spelling mistakes on bottles and screw caps that quite obviously have been reattached,” he said.
The growing appetite for Bordeaux makes it one of the most appealing brands for wine fraud across the globe, said Michael Egan, director of authenticity at Bordeaux Winebank, a France-based firm that uses its own five-star rating system to authenticate Bordeaux wines. “I have seen a considerable amount of Château Petrus 1982, sadly, as counterfeit,” said Egan.
A bottle of 1982 Château Petrus can sell for as much as $60,000 at Sotheby’s.
In June, Edgerton held a tasting of 12 magnums of Bordeaux — some dated as old as 1945 — with an estimated worth of $200,000, had they been genuine. Edgerton said that there was enough visual evidence, such as the cork from the magnum of a 1945 Château Mouton-Rothschild, to spot wine fraud for all 12 bottles. “The 1945 cork — the 5 is scratched out and it looks like a 6 was there,” said Edgerton.
Once the bottles were opened, Edgerton spotted another throwaway clue. “Some of it tasted like battery acid,” he said.
“The problem [of counterfeit wine] is real, and it definitely has the potential to get considerably worse,” said Marc Lazar, a St. Louis-based wine counselor who runs Cellar Advisors. Lazar has weeded out phony versions of young fine wines (like a 2005 Rayas Châteauneuf du Pape and a 2000 Lafite Rothschild) from the cellars of his clients, he said. “Not being a technical expert in printing or glassmaking, the stuff looks really good. It’s much harder to detect,” Lazar said.
In China, counterfeiters have been known to forge bottles of Château Latour and Domaine De La Romanée-Conti. “You think it’s the real one, except that inside you have grape juice, alcohol and sugar,” Botebol said.
Such advances in counterfeiting has lead wine producers like Screaming Eagle, a vineyard in Oakville, Calif., to include discrete elements on each bottle to assure customers that their wine is authentic. “We know that we’re easy targets. There is so much money at stake that we are careful,” said Armand de Maigret, the estate manager for Screaming Eagle.
But don’t fret, oenophiles: Experts say that less than 5 percent of all wine sold in auction houses or on the secondary market is fraudulent. “The vast majority, an overwhelming majority [of wine] is perfectly fine,” he said.
Click here to view our Fake Vintage tips, including how to avoid frequently counterfeited wines
