Tracking wine origin and authenticity

Tracking numbers aren’t just for FedEx anymore. Recently, they’ve cropped up on a number of products, including wine, to the benefit of consumers who are thirsty for more knowledge about their purchases.

New Wines of South Africa Bottle Seal

For wines produced during the 2010 vintage, Wines of South Africa introduced a new bottle seal, certifying that a wine was produced sustainably. Consumers can visit swsa.co.za and enter the numerical code on their bottle to retrieve additional information about the wine.

The information provided is drawn from the country’s Wine of Origin database, which dates back to the 1970s, as well as from the Integrated Production of Wine program, which encourages environmentally sustainable practices in wine production.

“We started looking at how we could demonstrate the fact that South Africa had actually been farming according to sustainable methods for quite a long time,” says Su Birch, chief executive officer of Wines of South Africa. “We realized, in fact, it wasn’t that difficult [with the systems that werein place].”

The new, not-for-profit seal has caught on with South African producers. The participation rate for the first year of the program was around 60 percent, but use shot up to 85 percent by the end of 2011 as more importers learned about the program. Full participation is expected by the end of this year.

Traceability of a Wine

The New World hasn’t cornered the market on tracking wine. Traceability is a mandate of wine production in European countries, says Richard Harvey, owner of Metrovino, a private wine store in Calgary, Alberta, that specializes in small, sustainable producers. If a customer has a problem with a bottle of French wine, for example, Harvey says he can contact the producer and, given the lot number, they can check their samples and determine if the flaw lies with the wine, or if there was a problem introduced during shipping.

Some wineries are also using a seal pro-gram similar to South Africa’s in an effort to prevent fraud. One such seal, the Prooftag or “Bubble Tag,” features unique bubble patterns matched to a reference number. Once the tag has been activated, searching the reference number brings up an image of the seal, as well as links to information about the producer.

Prooftags on Pillitteri Wines

Niagara’s Pillitteri Estates Winery has adopted the Prooftag system for its icewines as a way to combat counterfeiting, a particular problem in the growing Chinese market.

“We’re putting Prooftags on all of our exports to China to keep authenticity and traceability as well as integrity and marketing all under one easy step,” says Charlie Pillitteri, chief executive of the winery.

The company also uses specially made bottles that feature a raised cartouche built into the glass. The bottle’s lettering is embossed 22-karat gold to make it more difficult to copy. Pillitteri says the extra security features are worthwhile.

“It’s expensive, but it’s worth doing. The cartouched bottles cost me more, the 22-karat-gold embossing and the firing of the bottles cost me more and the Prooftag costs me more, but my product is worth protecting because we’re building a brand over there,” says Pillitteri, adding between 30 percent and 40 percent of his winery’s exports go to China.

With files from Darren Oleksyn.