Wines & Vines

COVER STORY "Each year many legal actions against copy wines are filed in the civil courts, which results in years of litigation and astronomical legal fees," he says. "Whereas a criminal complaint could have been filed with the public authority on a Monday morning, and within a day or so officials can raid offenders and immediately stop trade." The overriding message: To some degree, distributors and wineries are only as helpless as they choose to be when fighting fakes in China. Technological approaches Preemptive strategies are also useful to thwart fakes and help prevent the situation from reaching legal arenas. What is often forgotten in the fight against fake wine in China is that local brands are also targets, including giants such as Great Wall, which is estimated to sell more than 100 million bottles per year. Take Bruno Paumard of Chateau Hansen: He says the company sells 90% of its production, which he says reached 2 million bottles last year, in its home province of Inner Mongolia in northern China. This remote market might seem AM Cherokee_Nov05.qxt 9/19/05 10:52 an unlikely target for fake Chinese wines Refilling Carlo Rossi bottles F rench, Chinese and Australian brands get the most press when it comes to fakes, but U.S. brands as diverse as Opus One, Screaming Eagle, Carlo Rossi and Marilyn Merlot also face intellectual property problems, says Jorge Sanchez, director of the U.S. consulate's Agricultural Trade Office in Guangzhou, China. "Carlo Rossi, for example, is the preferred wedding wine of Fujian citizens, with the empty jugs sometimes gathered, refilled with cheap wine—such as bulk wine from Chile or France—and sold as the real thing," he says. "In the case of Marilyn Merlot, the winery and distributors try to keep tabs on where the bottles go." Such examples suggest a counterfeit problem that already bridges wines from entrylevel to cream of the crop. J.B. until you consider a handful of Hansen labels sell for $75 or more per bottle, with the newest astronomically priced at $700. That makes refilling bottles with a few dollars of local wine lucrative. "Our contacts often bring us fake bottles of Hansen they have found in shops in Inner Mongolia, to be analyzed in our lab so we can complain to the authorities," says Paumard. To slow down Page 1 the counterfeits, Hansen now uses bottles with the winery's logo embossed in glass, thus making it more expensive and difficult to copy. The brand 1421, which sources wine from Xinjiang in the northwest, bottles it in Shandong in the east and ships it countrywide, has sought legitimacy with Chinese consumers by using "traceable" labels. 1421's Randy Svendsen says the company worked with German hypermarket hauling precious cargo • 24 hour dispatch • Competitive rates • Personalized Service • Radio/Cell phone equipped • State-of-the-art equipment • Maximum payload capacity • Over 30 years in operation • References available • Fleet of over 200 trucks including Wine Tanks and Dry Freight Vans CHEROKEE FREIGHT LINES 5463 Cherokee Road • Stockton, CA 95215 Telephone: 209.931.3570 • or visit our website:www.gocfl.com 32 W in es & V i ne s AU G U ST 20 13

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