Britain is being ‘flooded’ with fake versions of popular vinos, according to the ‘Sherlock Holmes of wine’ who has revealed how to tell the difference.
Organised criminals are manufacturing ‘high-end counterfeits’ of well-known labels sold in British supermarkets and off-licences such as Yellow Tail, Maureen Downey told The Wine Blast Podcast.
The n brand distributes 13.5million cases of wine across the world every year, including Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, and is distinguishable by its black glass bottles wrapped in colourful labels with kangaroo art work.
The expert said the bottles are being replicated ‘to a professional degree’ on an ‘unprecedented degree’ which has never been seen before.
Ms Downey said: ‘An Asian organised crime gang has partnered with a European organised wine gang to flood the market with counterfeit Yellow Tail.’
In order to make such accurate copies, she claimed the gangs are spending half a million dollars to get the same digital printer used by the brands producers.
Wine counterfeiters previously focussed on make replicas of old and rare bottles as they were the most profitable.
However, Ms Downey said they have moved away from this because it requires sourcing period glass, ageing the labels and making sure the cork is ok.
‘Now, they just have it all made to the same specs that the producers use. It’s a different game. It’s much more money. The average consumer is pretty screwed,’ she added.
The wine aficionado said those who drink Yellow Tail regularly would be able to tell the difference in the same way a Coca-Cola fan would know if they had been given Pepsi.
It may be harder for people who are trying it for the first time or only drink it occasionally.
Some other ways of checking include inspecting the bottle for spelling mistakes, poor print quality, watermarks and missing information on labels.
But Ms Downey said it’s easier nowadays to ‘replicate wines at scale’.
Even distributors do not always know what to look for because many producers keep their anti-fraud measures ‘so secret’.
In 2021, KVK supermarket in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, had its alcohol licence removed after a trading standards investigation found 41 fake bottles of Yellow Tail following reports from customers that the bottles of wine did not taste right.
The following year, a 142 bottles of counterfeit Yellow Tail were found in a shop in Leicestershire.
Shopkeeper Kannan Vigneswaran was ordered to pay £4,000 after admitting to buying the wine from a man in an unmarked van offering a deal.
Presenter of The Wine Blast podcast, Peter Richards, said: ‘It’s not just fine and rare wines. You constantly read about producers or merchants being convicted for blending X into Y and calling it Z.’
He revealed a Yellow Tail source had confirmed the scale of the issue and revealed 100,000 cases of fake Yellow Tail had allegedly been produced by a criminal gang in Moldova.
Mr Richards called it ‘an industrial level’ scale of production and said Yellow Tail have pursued the problem legally but as they ‘don’t have much hope of any conviction’ the best they can do is monitor shipments ‘as closely as they can’.