Ponsot: Burgundy ‘unprepared’ for counterfeiting

Laurent Ponsot, the head of Domaine Ponsot, has warned that it’s up to Burgundy producers to protect themselves against wine counterfeiting – but many remain unprepared.

Laurent Ponsot

Speaking to the drinks business Hong Kong, Ponsot said many Burgundy estates lacked the sufficient record-keeping needed to ward off the potential for their wines to be counterfeited in future.

“Everybody individually has a responsibility to protect themselves but it is difficult in Burgundy. Many estates started as small growers with modest budgets who never anticipated their wines would become the object of counterfeiting.  Very few producers know which labels were used by their grandfathers, for example. My feeling is that Burgundy producers are a bit shy in using preventative measures also.”

Although Ponsot thinks that for the most part, Burgundy producers should not need to worry about counterfeits, he recalls the bitter struggle he had in bringing fraudster, Rudy Kurniawan to justice in 2013 after discovering faked bottles of his own wine at an Acker, Merrall & Condit auction in New York.

“I spent all my energy tracking down the biggest faker on the planet. It was exhausting. And now I fear that potential counterfeiters may target mid-range Burgundy instead. It’s less risky to them.”

Ponsot recalled the first time he spotted his first faked bottle of Domaine Ponsot which was trying to pass as one of his 1985 Clos de la Roche. “It was in 1990 in Kuala Lumpur – a retail shop of all places! It just couldn’t have been what it said it was – the label was laughably photocopied so I destroyed it. Germany and the US are still the biggest creators of fake wine, I don’t think China and the rest of Asia are particularly guilty of this.”

Since 2008 Ponsot has used synthetic closures – the Ardea Seal AS-Elite, sourced in Italy which he triumphantly calls “the perfect closure” as it avoids TCA taint and enables a more precise control of bottle maturation. More to the point, it’s extremely difficult to copy, but what do the Chinese think of this closure, given that they are naturally more favour of traditional cork?

“They love it! They perfectly understand why I use it and as relatively new wine consumers, they are not wedded to these notions of cork being the only answer. Europeans – especially Germans – hate it though, but never mind.”

Ponsot, dubbed the “Sherlock Holmes of Burgundy” thanks to his pursuit of Kurniawan has employed ‘five elements’ for each bottle, enabling them to be tracked around the world. Since the 2011 vintage he has used the “intelligent case” which records the bottle temperature every four hours for up to 15 years. Used in conjunction with a smartphone app, the intelligent case provides information and records where the temperature has been senses and therefore if the bottle has been moved.

Next up is the “connected case” which informs the domaine of the whereabouts of each bottle and when the case is opened. “Say I sell a bottle to my importer in X country, but the bottle turns up in Japan, I would know that that importer is lying when they say they haven’t sold it or I would know that something has happened to it. Once the case is opened, there can only be one of three options: either to store in a customer’s cellar, for a retailer to store in their shop or to be drunk there and then. If it’s for drinking and we are comfortable the bottle is with the end consumer then we at the domaine will erase the data from the microchip.”

Ponsot is currently working on the connected case for the 2015 vintage. “It is now virtually impossible to copy one of my bottles. It has been a tiring process and we have invested heavily in technology to protect our wine. In a way it is flattering that people want to go the lengths to copy our wine but of course it is not fair to the end consumers who pay such a lot for our bottles. Counterfeiters copy Breitling and Rolex, they do not copy Swatch.”