THEWINEMONOLOGUES.COM: In China, caveat emptor . . .

In China, caveat emptor . . .

'82 Lafite Rothschild for 98000 RMB?? What a bargain!! That's only $15,463.51 a bottle— I'll take a case!

There are three things that really bother me about this opportunity. . .

1. I cannot afford Lafite— even at it's most reasonable prices;

2. the markup and tax here in China on wine is out of control . . . the '82 Lafite Rothschild generally sells for a mere $6,000- $7,000 in the United States and France;

3. and, even if I could afford it, there is a good chance it is fake.

That's right— there is a good chance it is fake.

China's consumption of wine has grown dramatically over the past decade (now #7 in the world) and with it, counterfeiters have increased their activities. One of the most "replicated" wine is French wine because it holds so much cachet with the Chinese consumer— Bordeaux in particular.

Fakes are "everywhere— from bottom to top of the range" says Romain Vandervoorde, head wine importer at Le Baron. "There is more Lafite '82 in China than was produced in France", he recently told Google news.

The most common practice of local counterfeiters is to tweak existing labels to look almost exactly like existing popular labels to make consumers believe they are buying the real thing. The real gutsy counterfeiters will the even purchase booths at wine fairs next to the legitimate wine producers and sell their substandard "wine". A bold example recently at a Chinese wine fair was "Benfolds" ( a play on Penfolds— one of Australia's oldest wineries) which sold wine made of citric acid, sodium citrate, flavoring essence, and coloring. The label though was the familiar red, white and black of the Penfolds brand- and in English— not understood by many locals.

The other form of counterfeiting uses old bottles of premier wineries— label and all. There are bottle scavengers in China that will pay as much as $320 for an empty bottle of Lafite Rothschild. They then fill the bottle with their "swill", recork and sell it on the market as the real thing— for real Lafite prices. It has gotten so bad, that Christie's Auction House in Hong Kong destroys all of the empty premier bottles of wine they use for fear they will be sold on the black market.

Counterfeiters prey on the undeveloped palates of Chinese consumers. 75% of the market in China is still local producers like Great Wall and Dragon Seal, but, trust me, they are less than appealing wines. This leads me to believe that the Chinese consumer has a long way to go understand good wine from fraudulent wine.

For some business people and government officials though, the value of sharing a Lafite lies in how much "face" it bestows, not on how well it tastes. With this lack of knowledge and emphasis on saving face, the counterfeiters will just keep on rolling out their juice— and at the price for wine here, who can blame them.

I am ever weary of the wine purchases I make here in Shanghai. I used to worry, when I paid for wine in the States, about whether I would enjoy the wine in a bottle, especially wine I had never tried. Now, I have the same worries but I also worry about whether the liquid in the wine bottle I purchase is actually wine!

Cheers for now. . .