The French newspaper Le Midi Libre reports about a wine from the domaine de la Romanée Conti à Vosne-Romanée which was counterfeited in China. Oftentimes the counterfeiters manufacture a product that is almost identical to the genuine product. However, this time the counterfeiters are no connaiseurs. Unfortunately many people in their target market, China, also lack the information on this and other prestigious wines.
Le Journal de Saone et Loire showed the label used by the counterfeiters, see here.
The counterfeiters made some basic errors:
Romanée Conti should be written with é not e. And it’s from Burgundy (Bourgogne), not Languedoc. In fact Languedoc-Roussillon is an area with the largest production (which led to the “wine lake”). In the best scenario the purchasers of this fake Romanée Conti drink cheap wine from the Languedoc-Roussillon region. But the content of the bottle might cause serious health risks or even be lethal. Then the third error is that Romanée Conti is red wine, not white wine. The counterfeiter did a particular bad job: the words Vin Blanc Sec are above the round apostil with Vin Rouge Sec.
The trouble is of course that if the Chinese consumer has caught up and know what to expect of wine labels, so will the counterfeiters. The vicious circle continues.
One way to fight it is my “break the bottle ceremony” proposal (August 2011), destroying the bottle after finishing a prestigious wine in front of the consumers. Read my proposal here.
Thank you Charles-Henri Fondras for pointing out this case.