FORGED: Grapes Of Wrath
© Veda Lane
The sunny cloud-swept days of a burgeoning spring in London are too scrambled for my body clock right now. The quarantine life has become one where days and nights melt together and routines become all the more important because they're the only thing reminding one that morning is in fact when the sun rises. My routines that have kept me hanging on during this indefinite time indoors are breakfast tea in the morning (loosely described as the AM part of the day) and an evening glass of wine (also loosely delegated to the PM part of the day).
As I drink my favourite cheapo screw top bottle from the neighbourhood Aldi knowing that I'll be back in a mask for too many bottles again the next week, I've been considering more what I've been drinking. Not from a health standpoint, I've thrown health out the window temporarily, but from an interest in alternative luxury assets and forgery. How good is this wine that I'm drinking, really? Probably not that good. Could it pass the test in a forged bottle of Emmanuel Rouget Pinot Noir? I have no idea. I'd like to investigate that here. When did wine forgery start? What is the wine market like and how does forgery affect it? How do we make moves against it? And as a small side note: how is the pandemic affecting wineries, and how can we as consumers help?
Wine has a long history intertwined with pictorial symbolism. An indication of wealth, love, and death, the vanitas of wine has subliminally instilled a mysticism surrounding the agricultural product. This is a product in which collectors now invest thousands, hoping to see returns in the future. Collecting wine as an alternative asset and the appreciation of rare or eventful bottles has been an art of speculation since the eighteenth century. Innovations in long-term wine preservation kept the shelf-sequestered liquid appreciating until cork is popped and greater mobility of transportation saw a boom of wine and the fakes that followed it. Britain specifically saw a market for wine speculation grow in the nineteenth century favouring Port, Bordeaux, and Madeira. Once the beginning of the twenty first century hit, technological developments revealed new insights, regulations were put in place, and the sport of speculation wholeheartedly swallowed the investment in fine wine making it a lucrative practice for those who can exploit its beneficial fruit.
There are a couple of ways that wine can be messed with: full forgery, adulterating (changing the actual contents), counterfeiting (wrong or misleading labelling), and intellectual property infringement. This can happen on accident or it can be an intentional misrepresentation of a product to gain higher profit margin. Wine expert Maureen Downey approximates the amount of fraudulent wine kept in unaware high profile collector and seller storage spaces to billions of dollars.
© Veda Lane
According to Downey, the main form of counterfeiting wines happens to also be the easiest. If you have a bottle you know is nice and will appreciate with time, simply refill it and, if need be, recreate a label. Restaurants throw out bottles every night and "disreputable" employees can sell bottles under the table for a swift profit (well, maybe not right now). But a quick search on eBay can get you an empty 1966 Château Lafite Rothschild bottle for 40 GBP. Sometimes the resulting product of these new bottles is too good to be true, which Downey nominates a "unicorn" bottle.
The storage facilities for wine and spirits at auction houses are perfectly calibrated to the chilly conditions rare alcohols require. But the sale of rare wine, even at some of the most trusted and vetted auction houses, is a dangerous game. The Economist estimated in 2011 that 5% of wine offered for auction is adulterated. Just this year, Sotheby's auction house in London totalled 2,254,568 GBP for the first Fine Wine sale of the year and Christie's totalled 1,116,075 USD for an online auction of Wine. Sotheby's auction house in New York totalled $7.8 million in 2006 for an incredibly rare collection of wines including 1811 Château Lafite, 1847 Château d'Yquem and two magnums of 1921 Château Pétrus. All bottles sold from this collector were found to be fraudulent including incorrect labels, Elmer's glue to fasten them, and inconsistent dating (some of which are earlier than the vineyards were established). How are we supposed to purchase the alternative asset in good faith when it seems wine is ripe for forgery?
It's difficult to discern an adulterated concoction of wine by taste. Unaccustomed to centuries-aged wines, the un-initiated – even sometimes the veteran – palette can only do so much so cut through the strong overtones of taste and decipher the authenticity of a product. Science comes to the aid of authenticators, especially when features beyond the cosmetic are disrupted. The most important variable to consider when investigating a bottle of wine is that ideally, the bottle should remain intact. Opening these bottles ruins the value that they have accrued over possible centuries of ageing. There are multiple methods by which a bottle and its contents may be authenticated. A tech group in France, Arcane, uses particle acceleration to reveal how old a wine is based on the atomic recipe of the glass bottle. NMR spectroscopy and Cesium 137 testing are other ways of analysing wine safely. Although the test must be done directly to a sample of the wine, NMR spectroscopy can provide 57 parameters by which wines can be identified. Parameters include age, soil, and geographical information that can be compared against other samples. Cesium 137 is a product of the atomic bomb, therefore by analysing levels of Cesium 137 present in a certain bottle, tests can conclude atomically if the bottle was produced before or after 1945.
Although scientific analysis can detect wine fraud, how can measures be preventative? A study in the British Food Journal from 2017 states that, just as in the art forgery market, preventative measures are hard to track as producers are hesitant to reveal their "anti-counterfeiting tools." The vineyards aren't the only ones keeping the knowledge of forgeries a privileged one. Bill Koch admitted that rather than divulge a collection of fakes, collectors will simply dump them into the auction market (thank goodness auction houses have their own preventative measures and authentication protocol to weed most of them out). Some collectors would rather keep fakes circulating in the open market rather than "sullying" the reputation of an otherwise profitable brand.
Currently, Maureen Downey explains that most techniques for preventing wine forgery and content manipulation are "cosmetic," but newer methods have a more tamper-proof, non-reversible approach. RFID tagging provides a way to track bottles. 'Prooftag', an initiative started by select European and North American wine distributors, is a small bubble seal which is irrevocably broken once the wine is opened and cannot be duplicated.
A new difficulty facing the industry is that of the global pandemic. Independent vineyards and their vendors are expecting to face hardships akin to those faced by small scale and local museums and galleries. Wine Searcher recently spoke with independent wine retailers about their struggles during the pandemic, from supply chain difficulties to interrupted sales strategies. Bottling the most recent harvests has been delayed, stores are struggling with receiving new stock, and prevention of tastings which are extremely important to making a sale. Indefinite delays to supplies including barrels and glass can have an adverse effect on the wine taste as well, making this year's notes unpredictable. The longer wine oxygenises, the more the quality is affected.
However, Wine Searcher also found that this year in the United States, alcoholic beverages saw a 55% increase in sales, with some wine sales reaching a 70% increase. We're obviously looking for something to pass the time indoors! While we're all completing projects and finding things to do though, I hope that once this is over I can return to my favourite art museums and laugh over a tasting with friends at those little spots of heaven which are local wine shops.
There is hope for the future of wine forgery, but until then it is a fascinating market study. In any case wine is meant to be enjoyed and independent vineyards are threatened. So right now, in this time of dire need for enjoyment, drink your bottle and savour it indoors!
Veda Lane,
Contributor, MADE IN BED
Sources:
https://www.liv-ex.com/2018/09/fine-wine-market-past-present-future/
https://jftwines.com/wine-resources/fine-wine-investment/fine-wine-market-history-performance/
https://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2020/04/covid-infects-logistics-especially-independent-wineries
https://www.decanter.com/wine-news/prooftag-fraud-proof-seal-to-combat-fake-wine-87817/
https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.sothebysinstitute.com/docview/420688285?pq-origsite=summon