Ep. 1067 Combatting Counterfeit Wines | wine2wine Business Forum 2021

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For more information, please visit wine to wine dot net and tune in every Thursday. At two PM central European time for more episodes recorded during this latest edition of wine to wine business forum. Okay. You guys. We're going to start So I just wanna introduce our moderator for this morning. Maureen is a repeat offender. She's back, but Anselmo, this is your first time. Right? Yes. He's a virgin, two, nine, two, one, Okay. It's a wine to wine version. So my philosophy in life is Kicha. So we're going to start, and then you'll see all the struggles because the other room finished just now. So on, Samuel, of course, guerre gonzaga. Anytime there's a three name in Italian, you know, there is it's the it's the the royalty of Italy. But besides that, how many of you know have heard of, San Leonardo? You see, you have fans here. I'll hold back. Okay. So, of course, you know, San Leonardo is what I call the Sascicaiah of, Trentino. I think that kinda summarizes. Everything. I'm sorry. You have to be affiliated with Sascicaiah, but I went to visit his wineries recently, amazing, amazing place to go to if I would highly recommend it. So take it away on Sanamo. Thank you. Thank you very much. So it's a great pleasure to be here with you this morning and to introduced to you Maureen Doni. And, the the the the speech of today is very interesting and very fascinating. So if you if you have the chance of buying a very expensive bottle of wine and it doesn't taste good, It might be for a couple of different, factors. It might be that the wine is off its peak and it's, towards the end of its career. It might be that, merchant or the wine shop where you purchased it. Has not well kept it and, and, it has got a term, it's shrunk, or it might not be the one you thought it was. And, all the speech of today is from Marine on this topic, and the Marine is also called the Sherlock Holmes of wine, which I find fantastic name to have. And, she has developed various companies. And, the last one, apart from Chai Consulting in two thousand and five, and then for consulting of private collections and your expertise is given to people who have large wine collections and to wine merchants, then you you invented this one lovely website with more than forty thousand pictures of capsules of porridge, glasses, inks, whatever is used to counterfeit wise. And then the last one is a chai volt, which is based on a blockchain technology. So I'm very, very interested to learn more about it, more infants. So thank you for being here. Thank you very much. Yeah. It's a a this is a bizarre topic. I know for a lot of people, but I I think it's kind of fun. I have to laugh about it a little bit because if not, I would cry. And I think that, you know, wine fraud is a lot more prevalent than than we think I had two emails this morning. One about a guy in Copenhagen, tiny. And another of, you know, funny funny wine from China. So, this my presentation is very visual, not a whole lot of words other than the one those coming out of my mouth. So I'm gonna I'm gonna go fairly quickly. So we're talking about combating, combating wine fraud. I spoke here two years ago. It was like my last trip did leave before the lockdown, and I've been missing it ever since. So what we're gonna talk about is what, you know, what we've learned since then, really. So wine fraud is still a very big problem, and a lot of people don't understand quite how big of a problem it is. But it it does represent a rather significant amount of, of dollar value. What's important to note also is that spirits aren't even bigger problems. So it's kind of hard to talk about wine fraud without from time to time, including spirits. And these numbers don't mean a whole lot to a lot of people. Until we break them down, which I'm gonna do, slightly. The World Health Organization recognizes that twenty percent of all alcohol sold in the world is illicit. So it has not gone through regular channels. It has not there's not been taxes paid. It's either counterfeit or, somehow illicitly, found. And that's, you know, when the WHO comes up with twenty five percent, I feel pretty pretty solid that to state wine is at at about twenty percent. So the market impact, a lot of people, are under the impression that somehow wine fraud doesn't affect them. If they don't drink DRC or Mouton, that it's it doesn't affect them. But if you drive on roads and you have kids in school, it does affect you. As you can see, just in the you, in the EU, your the governments here are missing out on over two billion dollars a year in revenue. In the UK, they're, you know, missing hundreds of millions. There was one guy Mark Lazar, who owns domain wine storage and domain. He's got logistics storage. He does consulting and he sells wine. When the FBI raided him, he owed four million dollars in back taxes to the city of Saint Louis. He also sells in New Jersey, Chicago, and California. So imagine how much money he owes. So the next time you wonder why schools are unfunded, I would like to point out that wine fraud has a lot to do with that because there's a lot of unrealized tax revenue, that we're looking at. So I know that's a different perspective on it, but it's an important one. I think for us as a community, to consider. So what are the all the different types of wine fraud? Because it it comes in many, many forms. We have theft. Theft is on the rise. Theft is a very big deal. People are bold and they are stealing from the producers, not just from, other sources. So egon Mueller has been busted, broken into. Producers in Chablis. Salas was broken into. And then we also have it in the supply chain. Now I want you to remember this one because this is from Leille in in France or in France. A bunch of DRC was stolen off this boat. We will see this stolen DRC again. So it's coming out of the supply chain. There was just recently a group of bandits. We call them bandits gangsters, whatever. Broken up in Bordeaux, they were stealing from Negosian houses. So it's a lot easier to break into a Negosian's warehouse or Cortier's warehouse than it is to break into the actual chateau. So theft is really on the rise, and it's not just in France. Borrolo too. This guy was this is a they broke in and stole Barrolo and barbaresco from producers. Obviously, retailers and restaurants are at risk. You know, a lot of people have figured out that wine fraud is really lucrative. And, it's easier to steal the real stuff and then sell it rather than having to make it. So we are seeing break ins all over the world in restaurants and in, from restaurants and and retailers. And this one cracks me up. These guys ripped broke into a hotel in in Burgundy and Bone. And the cops were chasing them down the road, and they were hurling grand crew out of the back of the car at the cops as they, as they were trying to get away. Just the picture. Somebody's gotta make a movie about that because that visual is amazing. But people are also stealing from private storage facilities and from homes. And this is, again, becoming a bigger and bigger problem. And what's interesting is that we see that, oftentimes, all of these thefts are being, the the wines end up in the in the hands of the same people. So I don't know if they're, like, on the dark web as sell your stolen wine here, but it seems to be the same people over and over and over again. Of course, stealing from Jolaine Maxwell is not something that makes me feel bad. So I had to add that one in there. It's happening in Australia. It's happening in the UK. It's happening in the US. It's happening in all over the world. Now this Nicola de meyer man, this one point two million dollars of wine that he stole from the CEO of Goldman Sachs in, from his home in the Hampton, is the same line that got stolen out of the port in France. Things did not end well for him because he jumped off the roof of the Carlisle the day before he was to go to court. Another issue that I'm seeing quite a lot of are damaged wines being sold. So globally, we've got a lot of hurricanes floods. Napa, we've got fires like crazy. And these, wines unfortunately end up back in circulation. So the insurance company will take them. They will sell them to somebody for, for re you know, for what did they call that? You know, you get, like, two pennies on the dollar. But then the that guy sells them forward without saying that they are damaged. So these are some bottles that I recently came across. And you can see that, you know, we've got fire damage there. We've got hurricane damage there, and these clearly went through some fire. So the FBI actually wants to test these bottles for for soot and to see what's inside, which is kind of interesting. That doesn't stop at at private people. We also have, wineries whose wine has been sold forward. I do a lot of insurance work. I represent a lot of wineries, and I make sure that their wines are not sold. I've actually had to testify in court. To make sure that wines don't get back into the, into the market because when they do, you know, the quirks are branded. Doesn't wanna go forward. There we go. And we've got major producers like Rumbauer whose wine has gotten back out into the market and it's fire damaged, and that's gonna kill their brand, or it's gonna harm their brand. So, not good. Illicit sales, sales that don't exist. I can't believe that people still buy, you know, Petress on eBay, Craigslist, and in Europe, Amazon. You know, it's a little bit scary, but obviously, if you send five thousand dollars to somebody who never get your wine, and then you go back and, oh my god, they don't exist. I get a couple emails a year from that. So, you know, these and Facebook, lots of list illicit sales on Facebook. Again, these are all sales where there's no sales tax occurring. These are not licensed vendors at all. And then the last thing and this is more, I think, of a European thing. Although it's gaining ground in America, are these, wine funds. And these wine funds tend to to belly up owing you know, hundreds of or millions or or, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars, millions of dollars. They break up and then all of a sudden they are back to life with a new name and a new owner two years later. And you know, the people that that lost out lost out. So counterfeit wine. Obviously, we have a different types of counterfeit wine. We have this IP infringement. So, the pack horse, actually, Petress recently won a lawsuit on this against pack horse. In Hong Kong, which is well, I don't know if it was Hong Kong or Mainland, which is great to see IP infringement actually getting, you know, covered in in Asia. It's fantastic. And while we like to laugh at these, I like to remind people that, you know, unless you speak, you know, other if if you gave me a bottle of something in Korean and it looked kind of similar, I wouldn't know. So even though these look funny to us, you have to recognize that the people who are buying them they don't actually they're not reading it. It just looks similar. So, but that can be a big problem. Then you have bottlers who make, who counterfeit their own line. They may coat their own and de chat to enough to pop. They make Spanish Jose into provence Roset. This guy, I think, is fascinating. I talked about him a couple years ago, but the biggest bottler in Bordeaux got busted, bottling Bordeaux AC as Saint Emilion in Pomerril, And what's really amazing about him is that he still runs some major Bordeaux wine board. Like, the board lace didn't even boot him. So if they're not gonna care, it's kind of hard for the rest of us too. And, of course, this also, you know, happens outside. I think it's really important that people remember this is not a French problem. We had fourteen, you know, million liters of wine, mislabeled, in Spain. So it's it's happening everywhere. Large scale production is something that we're seeing, as kind of a new trend, and it's not just in China, yellow tail. The UK is a wash in counterfeit yellow tail. These are gangs. This is organized crime. So I think this is kind of fascinating. How do I does it play? This is a bottling line for Chateau Latour Carnet in China. So when the Chateau saw this, they were horrified because, of course, they're not bottling Chateau latour carne and China. But that is the the level of Oops. That's the level of production that we're seeing now. We're seeing full scale professional production. And then we have this, you know, counterfeit recreation of older wines, which I always talk about. We have mislabeling wines, which is kind of funny. Because this is an authentic two thousand four Latash. So you still got Latash. Like, I'm still drinking it. But, but it's not the two thousand five, which would obviously be a lot more expensive. Refilled bottles are are becoming a problem. There was a gang in, in Europe that went around different countries. They stole empty bottles from restaurants, casinos, hotels, refilled them and sold them online. In Europe and in the United States. So refills are a big problem. So we've got refills, you know, everywhere. We've got empty bottles being sold on eBay. We really need to to fix this. So historically, you know, if we're talking about trends, historically, what we saw was these counterfeit wine productions of older vintages. And, actually, all that Romane Conte is stuff that I saw in London last week. We we did a job there. But they they they used, more cross production methods, you know, they use home printers, things like that. What we're seeing today is current vintage, current release, professional production, including all the anti fraud. So that is a counterfeit Romene Conte. So they are they are using the same level of production that the producers actually use, which is really scary. And then, of course, there's the making of the unicorns, which isn't happening in the west as much anymore because well, there is one guy that's still pumping out magnum's and three liters of nineteen forty five Romneaconti, Romneaconti. Can't get we can't get him shut down. I don't know why. But then, of course, we've also got wines that are being made in China that don't exist any place else. So really important trends, are gonna be that their the moves are getting bolder. They are counterfeiting all levels. They're not just counterfeiting the top stuff. Industrial scale production, professional sourcing, huge amount of theft, and all of that is because we have opaque markets. And one of the reasons for all this is that both organized crime and conflict zone production have become very popular. Organized crime has realized that if you get caught due trafficking drugs or trafficking humans, which was their you know, the it's it's been their their, MO for, you know, hundreds of years. You're gonna get jail time. If you get caught counterfeiting wine or selling counterfeit wine, you might get a small fine. So it is highly lucrative, incredibly low risk. So we have organized crime in Eastern Europe and in in in Europe, in the United States and South America, and in China, all heavily involved in the production of counterfeit wine. So the gangs are getting bolder. You know, they they're making SAScaya and and Unico in Spain. This or this is a video from the Carbonary, Carabinieri, yeah, of counterfeit Sausakaya production. So that bust occurred in twenty nineteen. It was publicized in in twenty twenty. It still hasn't gone to court. Are you enjoying this podcast? There is so much more high quality wine content available for mama jumbo shrimp. Check out our new wine study maps or books on Italian wine including Italian wine unplugged and much much more. Just visit our website, mama jumbo shrimp dot com. Now back to the show. But that is an actual gang of people. They had the glass made. They had the capsules made. They had the labels. They they had the right paper. They had the labels professionally printed. You know, they had the tissue paper made. They had the woods made. They even had the bands that go around the wood. So we're not talking about, you know, a guy in his in his kitchen anymore. We're talking about highly organized, highly funded people. The largest bust ever in China happened a couple weeks ago. And one of my favorite lines is there's no such thing as a counterfeit wine that doesn't come with a counterfeit tale of provenance. And in this story, they came up with some crazy ass Rothchild family fight that, that is, you know, was the back the the backstory about this wine. It doesn't exist. So the recent production, as I've said, you know, when you do recent production, you can have the same glass made You don't have to worry about aging anything. And they're using professional print. This is scary to me. This is really scary to me because this is one way that we used to be able to tell a lot that things were counterfeit. So this is DRC that's actually plate pressed. It's not quite the same quality. If you can see that line while you can see that the letters float a little bit, they're not on a straight line. But this is what we have to look for now when we're looking at at this kind of new kind of production. On this gia, you can see that it's also plate pressed. However, that accent shouldn't be touching that e. So and the paper itself was is kind of wrong. If you look at these lines on an authentic gia, they're equidistant. So on and on here, they're not. But the this is the level of detail that we have to get to now to to to figure out the the authentics versus the counterfeits. When it comes to, to glass, some of you may have already seen this video, But, in in Hong Kong, one of our authenticators found this petrous, and they they just put plastic inserts inside the punts. So if you were to just pick it up and look at it, it would look like it was an embossed glass. So this is, you know, they're they are highly sophisticated. Again, this is counterfeit this is a totally counterfeit, but they've got all of the anti fraud that DRC puts on. And, you know, again, this is really scary because ninety nine point nine nine percent of people would take a blue light, look at that and say, okay. We've got docs. We've got all the right things, but it's still counterfeit. That this is what they're doing. It is wine fraud has always been an issue across the board. I tend to talk mostly about fine wine, but it's important to remember that it that it affects entry level wine and mid tier wines as well. I had to show you this picture because how hilarious is that. That's a case of nineteen forty five BCC that they claim as a case. Look at the difference in those bottles. So it affects low level. It affects high level. It affects old. It affects everything. So what are producers doing to protect their brands? Unfortunately, what they're doing is almost all cosmetic. They feel good about it. They feel like they've got anti fraud. They feel like they've got embossed glass. But what they're really doing is, kind of empowering counterfeits. What they need is oversight into their supply chain, and oversight into secondary markets so that they can understand the movement of their wines better and then be able to recognize when their wines are being, sold inappropriately. But some of the things that they're using today are include, the the micro writing. Can you see the vintage on the lady's hip? That's Lafit? So there's a lot of different producers using different types of micro writing, which is kind of fun. That's the margot that the steps on the on the side. They're actually not doing this anymore, but they did for several vintages. And, of course, Mutan has had micro writing forever because in within the shield, it says Mouton Rothrope. So this is not something that's new. QR codes for marketing, not anti fraud. There's nothing about a QR code that's gonna tell you that something is authentic. The bad guys can very easily create websites that that replicate what what, you know, where it should go and what it should say. A lot of producers are using different types of holograms. Either in the paper or or put on afterwards or in the print. These can be substantiated, used to substantiate refills because you just take the bottle refill it and, hey, it's got all the anti fraud, so it must be real. Invisible and reactive ink, similarly cosmetic, can be counterfeited. But, you know, it's it's a step. And they're doing on on capsules as well as bottles. So these are fun things to look for. Get a blue light and have fun at a line store. Again, these can be used to substantiate refills. Same. Well, glass is a little bit more difficult because they have to have the glass actually made. But, it can be used to substantiate refills. So the technology right now, we've got, people putting chips under under, labels, people putting proof tags on. Again, I think these are more marketing than anti fraud. Anything that doesn't protect the the the opening of the bottle, doesn't stop somebody from coravanting it and refilling it or, you can patch a capsule back together, unfortunately. The other thing about these and a lot of other anti fraud is that they require immediate proximity to the bottle. Most people do not buy fine and rare wine by going to a store and dropping twenty grand. Most people buy from a vendor, in response to an email, at auction, you're not in proximity to the bottle. So these things do not help, and they give no provenance. So a lot of people are trying to use the blockchain now, which we employ. But the blockchain is not a solution. Again, if you have to be that close to the bottle, it's too late. You've already paid a thousand dollars for it. So I think a lot of these solutions are well intended, but they're not enough. If you have to have immediate proximity, it's too late. Also, you you need this information prior to sale. And provenance is important. So, again, a lot of these blockchain things are just, in my opinion, not happening. They're not they're not full enough. What are vendors doing? Vendor are looking the other way. However, I will say, even those vendors that are well intentioned, that really wanna do the right thing, oftentimes don't know what to look for because all of these cosmetic solutions that producers are using are secret. Well, what good does that do anybody? Like, everybody who buys petrus is not gonna take it back to petrus to get it authenticated. So there's we we've got a ways to go here. So what we need to do to combat fraud is we need oversight in the supply chain, oversight in the secondary market. Solutions need to have proof of both provenance and, authenticity. Because if you're a wine producer, if your wine is out of if your wine is out of condition and people are drinking it, that's almost as bad as it being counterfeit. In either way, the intended experience is not what it it is meant to be. So we and you need the information prior to sale. So we've been working for a long time. I've been working for a long time to come up with this solution. I've come up one. We call it the Shea Vault. Shay is French for seller. My mother's maiden name is Shay. It's a little homage to mom because I birthed companies, not children. So what what we have done is we've come up with this solution that proves authenticity, It protects producers, consumers, and vendors, and it empowers consumers to make smart choices. I believe that any good solution needs to be layered. So the blockchain is one piece of the of the tech, the blockchain in and of itself is not a solution. Blockchain is one tool in the toolbox. So we use chips. We use we use the blockchain. You know, we use the internet. All of these things together create the solution. The blockchain is immutable. It's timeless. These things will be there forever. The provenance transfers. So when I sell my bottle to Stevie, the bot you know, the the provenance updates, and then when she goes to sell it to Hainey, then, when he goes to sell it, it'll say Maureen undit thins TV undit thins, or it'll say anonymous person from San Francisco owned it, but this is where they bought it. So, how it works is we we input the bottles either at the time of production, That pen folds capsule is a capsule. I've been working with enoplastic for several years, and they have created a proprietary capsule for us, through which a chip can be read. The problem is you can't read through ten. And most fine wine is made of tin. And there's no way that I'm gonna ask producers to go to plastic. So we have created a, a chip or, excuse me, a a tin capsule through which chips can be read. So the bottles are chipped. It goes into our software that we've built. And then, the, a ledger of authenticity and provenance is produced. That, a URL of that ledger can be placed on either a vendors, sales platform, or, like, a, a online auction catalog so that people can click on it and see the actual certificate of authenticity and provenance. For that particular bottle, with a photograph of that bottle, with the conditions of that bottle at the time of that sale. So you're actually getting information about the bottle, in advance of your purchase. And we include where my shake consulting logo is, that square. Whoever the company is who's inputting the bottle. So if the producer inputs it, that's also a hyperlink that does all the marketing stuff that a QR code would do. So I'm not I'm not getting rid of the marketing. I'm just doing I'm adding it in in a way that actually protects the bottle. So the, the great thing about the shave off is that we can put bottles in either at the time of production. The primary vendor or distributor can input the bottles with our secondary market capsule. Or they can be, inputted by one of our authenticators and the secondary market at any time. I've spent a lot of time in the last several years training people to be authenticators because there's no way that I'm gonna tackle this world of wine fraud. We need an army. So I'm building a as much of an army as I can. And we currently have authenticators who are trained and who are certified in, Hong Kong, both coast of the United States, London, Dijon, Bone of Geneva Zurich and Brazil. And we've got other people who are, training all over the world, and it's kind of fun. It the the Program is invigilated by Siobhan Turner, Master of wine. Hooray. She just got her M W. And prior to working with me, Siobhan, ran. She was the executive director of the Institute of Masters of Warren for eight years. So she knows a thing or two about, about teaching people about different parts of one. So that's the small army that we're building to to fight the blight. It's a it's a crazy topic. It's an interesting topic. But it's a topic that everybody needs to be aware of. I would ask that you all recognize that it's a problem, talk about the fact that it's a problem, and work with, you know, we need to work within our industry to recognize the problem and combat it because keep putting our heads in the stand isn't getting us anywhere. So that was my quick thirty minute. Bam. Presentation. Thank you very much, and Hopefully, we have some questions. I know that was fast. Absolutely. It was fascinating to listen to you and to see the various different because we always think of counterfeiting in terms of the classic, changing the label, but you showed us so many different sides of this business. So it's really interesting. I don't know if anybody of you has a have a question for marine or from the internet. Really insightful presentation. And like he said, there was a lot of things that I didn't necessarily see at first. The one of the most shocking was to me was the yellowtail, which I did not think would be counterfeited. And, based on that, I was wondering what future trends in terms of, like, maybe wines that are becoming popular might we see that might be on that pathway of counterfeiting? Cause that's total that's something that affects more people than just the ones that have a lot of money to make these big, big sellers. Right. So, you know, if you think about people who counterfeit money, They either counterfeit big a couple big bills or lots and lots of little bills. So, the guys who were counterfeiting the yellow tail was actually a Chinese gang, and they literally just wiped out London. They they they got their wines everywhere. I would say anything that becomes popular automatically gets counterfeited. I mean, if it's if it's the next hot thing, you know, as soon as Maribald took off, that started getting counterfeited. So I I would say that whatever the next trend is, that's right for, you know, the guy the the the crooks are gonna sell what's gonna make money. So they're either gonna do high end stuff or they're gonna do what's selling a lot. The thing some of the things that kind of frighten me, I spoke a couple weeks ago to the conference, the National Conference of State Licker Authority. So in the United States, we have fifty States, and each one of them has their own liquor authority. And they seem to think that the three tier system in the United States protects. The same way that people in in Europe think that if something is under bond in the UK, that that means that somehow the wine is authentic. All of those counterfeits that I found in London last week were under bond, and one of them was made by Rudy. I know definitively it was made by Rudy. So I think that there are a lot of things that we, tend to take for granted where we think that we're safe. And, you know, we're really not. It's kinda like jaws. Like, if you're in the water, there's a shark nearby. So just have your eyes open. Be aware. No other questions about the crazy world of fraud? I have a question as a as a as a wine producer. So it's very interesting what you offer in terms of a service. And how how does it work for a small company? Because, obviously, Penfolds is a very large producer, which has very optimized, probably bottling line and, and so on the process is quite long to certificate through blockchain. No? No. So, you know, bottling lines are kinda like Legos. Right? You can you can click in a new piece. So we're developing, a piece. So it's the same capsule. So the the the the the chip comes inside the capsule. So the capsule gets put on just like normal. We're inserting a piece that takes four images of the bottle at a time as it goes underneath a scanner. So the chip will be scanned and the images will be taken. And all of that information gets gets, collected through our software, and then a ledger is made for every bottle. That's very interesting, man. And what And it costs about the same as a quirk. That that was the second question. Yeah. So, I mean, at scale, we can it's it's just not an expensive process. And it needs to not be. And but the good thing about it is, like, vendors can charge consumers to change, ownership. So we're trying to give value to all the different people in in in the, you know, production site. It's a passport of the of the Well, and then as a producer, you'll be able to see, you know, if people are collecting your wine or they're trading it or You know, if a palette of wine ends up in China that you sent dessert so a couple years ago, DRC stopped shipping completely to Germany because there were some shenanigans going on. Petris doesn't currently ship to Las Vegas because there are some shenanigans going on. So if bottles end up in in Las Vegas, they know that that was through the gray market or the secondary market. And now they can try to track who's doing that. Unfortunately, right now, most producers only have the serial number to try to track these bottles. But if you could actually go online and see the movement of those bottles through through the markets, you could have insight into, you know, in in America, a lot of these the cult wines They don't want guys who are gonna get three cases and flip them immediately. And there are lots of people on waiting lists. If if a guy gets three cases and flips one to pay for the other two, okay, fine. But if somebody's just making money, because when you get screaming eagle, you know, or Harlan or or these, you know, these big brands, you pay a couple hundred bucks. You can sell it immediately for a couple thousand. So they wanna make sure that the people who are getting their wine are enjoying their wine. You know, it is there is a passion, there is a soul. It's not just a commodity. So, you know, we're we're trying to help producers. We're trying to help consumers. Somehow, I'm the bad guy, in a lot of cases, but I know I'm on the right path. Yes, honey. Hey, great presentation. Thank you very much. And what about these numbers are huge, obviously. What about the, like, market share? Like, where are the big bucks at? Is it the yellow tail or is it the the the fine wine? Where what are the proportions there? Both. So, I mean, when you talk about big bucks in terms of sales, When you talk about, like, sales revenue that is, like, missing taxes, that's gonna be mostly at the high end. But then again, you know, I was talking to somebody yesterday, and and and they said a right that a that a bottle of yellow tail Most of the value of that bottle is in taxation. So, you know, it's kinda hard to say. I would say, though, in the West, it's mostly at the high end. In China, it's across the board. Hello, Angel. I was involved in the past with proof tag, a French company that probably you know. And, we have the we had several contacts with the wineries, and also with the with the government, with the ministry of agriculture, we know that our they they consider that the paper strip that we put on some of the bottles in Italy, is enough, but as you as you know, it's not enough. And now everybody is speaking about block chain. But as you told before, is, again, that's a cosmetic solution without any other integration with other stuff that you mentioned. I have a question for you. Is, is there any, any, any news about the ability to integrate, chips or other counter fire stuffs in the glass or the wine bottles? That would only be able to be used to substantiate a refill. So, I mean, that's the the that's the tricky part. I'm in a I'm in a I'm in a good position because for the last twenty years, anybody who's had an anti fraud solution has brought it to me. So I've had a lot of good market research. Right? But, you know, the problem with all of these things is if if they're not layered, if the chip in the glass, doesn't relate to something in the closure, then all it would it it's not layered. We need we need layers. We need for that closure. You know, our chip is to is wound so tight that if you pierce it with a needle like a coravin, then, it reads damaged or altered. And, we need that because, I mean, hey, enjoy your bottle, but don't resell it. Right? So a chip in a glass would just mean that somebody could refill it and and say, no, it's real. Look. You know, click. Thank you so much. So when when you put the chip under the capsule, it's not possible to take out the capsule, put in the needle, let's say, empty it, and then re put on the capsule and No. Not that's not You destroy the chip. You destroy the chip. If you if even if you, you know, if you lift it off, you destroy the chip. Perfect. Yeah. So, I mean, that's Silicon Valley is, called Silicon Valley, not Silicon Valley, not silicone Valley. Silicon is glass. So if your chip is made properly, you know, it'll it'll damage. Now what we're fighting about or what we're what we're battling is that that means that if if you hit the top of the bottle really hard, it could also be damaged. So these are these are technology issues that we're gonna have to work out. But it's not like we're gonna find a solution and then stop. You know, we'll constantly be evolving. Gotta start somewhere. Very, right. Well, thanks for coming. I actually have a question. Okay. Yeah. So number one, they're two folds. One, do you have are you working with any Italian wineries that you're saying? Not right now. I'm talking to some. Okay. And my second question is, are you using the same chip, quote unquote, whether you're using, you know, like Chateau Lafite or Yellowtail. Are they the same are you offering the same service? So those are two different and also, cost structure. Okay. So, Things like Yellowtail, when when you look at a when you look at a company like PenFolds, they have a lot of different, you know, wines. They they don't need a ledger of authenticity and provenance for their entry level stuff. Right? Yellowtail does not need a lead a letter a ledger of authenticity and problem. What they do need is to know they need, to know that, you know, when they send something to the UK, the this pallet can be scanned, and yes, that's actually in the UK. So that's pallet. Well, it can also be by the bottle. You can scan an entire pallet. It's funny. We're using, library technology. This is literally libraries have figured out how to scam, like, whole things of books. So so but that will be cheaper. You know, that won't cost as much a book as a it's the same. It well, it'll be cheaper because they don't need the extra back end. It'll be a simpler solution. But, no, we're gonna use the same chip because for us, the more that we use that chip, the cheaper it becomes. You know? I mean, when we get to the point that it's I think right now our chip is, like, twenty cents. But when we get to the point that we're getting millions and millions of them, it's gonna be a penny, so it won't matter. You know? It's a twenty cents per bottle. The chip is twenty cents to me right now. Right. And then what about what about the service? So we're gonna change because it's not a matter of just putting the cost of the chip. Right? So no. So for the primary market, the chip will go in the capsule. Right? And we will charge about the same price as a quark, so about a euro Okay. Model. And that includes the service. Okay? For lesser producer, you know, for a two level for that. Yeah. We're gonna get there. I mean, I'm we're in development. Right. But I'm just asking you questions that a producer would Yeah. Yeah. Right? Because it's all about also the cost. Everyone would love to track their bottles. Also, not in just in terms of counterfeiting, try traceability. But just in general, even from a market standpoint, how they move to where where is the product, alright, from where to whom? Exactly. Totally interesting. But it I think in the end, it will be especially the, lot of Italian wine producers. They're in small and medium. Right? They're family owned, and it it will come down to cost. Right. And it'll still be about the cost of pork. Yeah. But the but one of the things that's that's interesting about this is that people already have anti fraud on their, in their accounting. They've already got a budget for it. And we're not gonna be, you know, more expensive than other solutions that are already out there. We're just able to offer more. So, you know, we'll be a little bit more expensive than proof tag, because I know how much they cost. But what we're what we're seeing right now is we've got a lot of interest for producers who wanna start by just inputting their stuff that they're sending to certain markets. And we can do that. You can do a small run. You can do a big run. You can do, you know, we can we can have the ledgers and the traceability, or it can just be proof of authenticity or not. So we are offering different levels of service to different, you know, people at different costs. When you get down to just, I wanna be able to scan this and say if it's real or not. Than you are looking at, like, twenty cents a bottle. Right. Okay. Very good. Alright. Let's give it up for Maureen Downey. And, Anselma Guaredire Gonzaga, what a fascinating, overview you gave us. I feel like your presentation was exhaustive and exhausting because it was it went so quickly, but I would really love to see that again because, I mean, all of those, stories that you bought. Thank you so much for doing that. Just come back in fifteen minutes. I do have to sanitize the room. So please get out of the room, and then we'll be coming back with, wine and, wine tourism with We hope you enjoy today's episode brought to you by the wine to wine business forum twenty twenty two. This year, we'll mark the ninth edition of the forum to be held on November seventh and eighth twenty twenty two in verona Italy. Remember, the second early bird discount on tickets will be available until September eighteenth. For more information, please visit us at white to wine dot net. Hi, guys. I'm Joy Livingston, and I am the producer of the Italian wine podcast. Thank you for listening. We are the only wine podcast that has been doing a daily show since the pandemic began. This is a labor of love and we are committed to bringing you free content every day. Of course, this takes time and effort not to mention the cost of equipment, production, and editing. We would be grateful for your donations, suggestions, requests, and ideas. For more information on how to get in touch, go to Italian wine podcast dot com.