We recently came across a BBC report about how to spot counterfeit wine and spirits. The report featured a law enforcement official checking liquor stores for bottles with typos and taking them away for testing.

This anti-counterfeiting strategy has several flaws:

1. A counterfeiter with reasonable spelling and grammar would not be caught using this method.
2. Wine bottles and labels are relatively easy to imitate because there is a standard look and feel across most brands. It not hard to gather lots of different wine bottles from many different brands and fill them up with fake stuff.
3. The lab might not be testing for the right counterfeit ingredients. The woman in the report mentioned the dangerous materials that are sometimes used in counterfeit wine. However a lot of counterfeit wine is actually made with cheap wine, not dangerous materials. Cheap wine will not kill the customer but it is still a crime and still steals revenue from the brand owner.  

Is this really the best wine and spirit companies can do for their customers? How many customers really want to take the time to look for typos? Would if a product contains a label not written in the customer's native language? Let's also not forget the amount of work required to check every bottle in a store for a small typo.

Why is this the anti-counterfeiting method law enforcement officials are relying on when there are so many brand protection technologies out there? There are brand protection technologies available today that are automatic, streamlined and leave a lot less room for human error.

Make an appointment with an InkSure representative if you want to learn more about brand protection technologies for wine labels and other products.