Wine bottles treated like currency

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/02/2016 (3002 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Frauds, lawsuits and smuggling booze down your pants — just another week in the drinks world…

For starters, another instance of counterfeit wine has turned up, this time in Italy.

Wine Spectator reports Italian authorities conducted a raid (not wine-related) in the province of Padua a few months back and, in the process, discovered more than 9,000 bottles of cheap sparkling wine labelled as Moët & Chandon Brut Imperial Champagne, which would have carried a retail value of over half a million dollars had they made it to retail. Authorities also found labels for 40,000 more bottles of phoney champagne, and arrested eight people in the raid.

In recent years, premium producers have taken additional safeguards to ensure consumers arent being duped into buying fake versions of their wine. Safeguards similar to those used in printing currency have been used on labels, while others use serial numbers on the bottle (or some combination of the two). It was the lack of the latter on the Moët & Chandon bottles that tipped off authorities that something was fishy about the bottles of bubbly.

Counterfeit wine has become quite the industry in recent years, especially in the burgeoning Chinese market, where many collectors are eager to get their hands on rare, expensive bottles of wine, such as top-end Bordeaux. Counterfeiters have been found on both ends of the supply chain — in France as well as in China.

– – –

Saudi Arabian customs officials arrested a man attempting to smuggle 14 bottles of liquor into the country from Bahrain by taping them to his legs and underwear under his robe.

While alcohol is forbidden in Saudi Arabia, and the mans punishment could include jail time and lashes, the Saudi customs Twitter account posted photos of the mans lower half, with the booze still attached.

– – –

It appears the Ottawa Food and Wine Festival has left a bad taste in the mouth of management of the citys Shaw Centre, where the fest has been held for most of the last two decades.

In December, the Ottawa Convention Centre Corp., filed a suit against festival organizers Treefort Hip Productions, seeking more than $150,000 plus damages stemming from the event, held Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 of 2015.

In addition to the claim Treefort didnt pay licensing and other fees, in an affidavit, the Shaw Centres vice-president noted the festival was very problematic, with many disruptive aspects including over-pouring of alcohol by exhibitors, intoxication, crowd-control issues, incidents of theft, intoxicated exhibitors, urination on the show floor and vomiting. Yikes.

For its part, Treeforts counterclaim seeks more than $900,000 in damages for what they call irreparable harm and a breach of agreement that led to Treefort not paying licensing fees.

uncorked@mts.netTwitter: @bensigurdson