10 Most Common Ways Of Counterfeiting Wine

In the 21st century, you can fake absolutely everything - from drugs and dollar bills to mobile phones and electric kettles. And wine is no exception in this case. Clever experimenters fake it the same way the Chinese fake iPhones and tangle teaser hairbrushes.

By the way, victims of wine fraud are not only ordinary people who can buy a fake in a supermarket near their home. According to some data, even among those wines that end up at the auction, 5% are fake .

Let's learn about the most common ways of counterfeiting wine .

Substitute

The easiest way to forge wine . Sparkling wines are given as sparkling wines, blended wines as varietal wines, ordinary wines as vintage wines, Moldovan wines as Spanish wines, and Bulgarian wines as French wines. There are countless substitution options, it all depends on the imagination of the master who fakes the wine . By the way, it is quite difficult to recognize such falsification.

Powdered wine

The most common method of forgery . This wine is obtained from evaporated grape must of a powdery consistency. This wort is diluted with water and alcohol and then enhanced with flavorings. It is quite easy to identify such a fake - at a relatively low price and, as a rule, paper packaging.

Mixing of wines

Cunning fraudsters often dilute cheap wine with a quality product, thus confusing receptors. Thus, even seasoned wine connoisseurs can mistake this incomprehensible concoction for a noble drink . Or you can go from the other side and increase the volume of initially high-quality grape juice with various third-rate liquids - this is what unprincipled winemakers do most often .

Dyeing

This method is resorted to as a result of the previous method of counterfeiting wine . After the mixing procedure, the mixture is given a believable color so that no one will guess about the fake . It even comes to the point that white wines are turned into red. And they do this by using either natural components - for example, elderberry or blueberry juice, or artificial - aniline, atracene, naphthalene dyes and even poisonous fuchsin. And this, as you understand, is not very good for health.

Preservatives

If the wine soured quickly, it means that it was not aged for the period it needed. Preservatives come to the rescue in this case, for example, salicylic acid, which is used to preserve cheap wines . But there is a preservative on whose side the law is - sulfur dioxide (E220), which contributes to the long-term storage of wine , and enters the drink naturally, that is, from the soil or during the fermentation process. The use of sulfites is a practice that is common and not condemned by professionals. Nevertheless, if you choose a really good wine , it is better that there are no sulfites in it.

Galization

This method is named after a certain Dr. Gall from Rhenish Prussia. At the beginning of the 60s of the last century, he made a discovery that played into the hands of all winemakers of the globe. If the wort turned out to be too acidic, but you don't want all the work to go to waste, you can "catch up" the wort to the required strength and acidity by simply diluting it with sugar and water. There is nothing harmful and illegal in this, except, perhaps, pangs of conscience.

Petiotization

The mass of crushed berries, which remained after the separation of grape juice, is called pulp (it includes the entire mass of crushed grapes, including juice, pulp, skin and stones). Nothing prevents this substance from also being turned into a product: with the addition of sugar, this mass is definitely also able to ferment. In principle, if the ideas of recycling and zero-waste production are higher in your value system than the ethics of winemaking, then you have nothing to worry about. All the more so because during petiotization, the bouquet and color do not lose their richness, and sometimes even improve. And this, in turn, allows us to talk about this method as a rather elegant deception.

Scheelization

If the wine turned out to be too sour or bitter, and the winemaker , on the contrary, wants to achieve sweetness, adding glycerin will make life significantly easier. To the winemaker , of course, and not to the person who will later buy this wine .