Protecting Your Wine--And Your Winery's Reputation

(Wines&Vines) - When it comes to tracking down fake bottles of alcoholic beverages, David Gooder says the challenge is like pulling weeds in a garden. Turn your attention to one corner, the chairman of the International Federation of Spirits Producers (IFSP) contends, and more interlopers will spring up behind you.

Gooder was one of several speakers featured at the first Wine Anti-Counterfeiting Seminar (WACS) that Wines & Vines and the Napa Valley Vintners hosted at the Silverado Resort & Spa in Napa on Wednesday. And while he told the audience of 108 attendees that the job of tracing fakes is never-ending, that doesn’t mean companies should ever stop protecting their brands.

According to Gooder, who also serves as managing director and chief trademark counsel for Jack Daniels Properties/Brown-Forman Corp., the spirits industry has been fighting counterfeiting for about 15 years. Many kinds of fraud take place in the beverage industry, he says, from on-premise substitution (a customer orders—and pays for—a glass of one brand and is presented with another, cheaper version), to refilling (a genuine bottle is refilled with another product and then resealed) to all-out fakes.

“Refilling is far and away the biggest issue,” adds Gooder, who theorizes that copycats opt into counterfeiting alcoholic drinks because it’s profitable and not complicated. But for a winery with a brand to protect, every counterfeit bottle represents potential erosion of confidence in that label. “We’ve seen entire brands literally tank in a country,” Gooder says. “The Rothschild example is a good one: More Lafite sells in China than is produced in France.”