Fake icewine floods Asian market

It has been predicted that up to a third of all icewine in the Asian market is fake, as fraudsters exploit the demand for icewine with inferior products that put the category’s reputation at risk.

The great danger for countries that produce icewine in the traditional way – such as Germany, Austria and Canada – is that quantity cannot be increased simply to meet demand.

Randy Dufour, export director at Inniskillin, one of Canada’s largest icewine producers, told the drinks business: “Very few places have the climate conditions nor the appetite for risk as we do. Several take short cuts and some are just unscrupulous.”

Producing icewine requires warm summers to achieve fully-ripened, healthy grapes and cold winters.

In Canada the highest temperature permitted for picking the grapes at is minus eight degrees Celsius. A further risk is that the grapes might rot due to hanging on the vines for so long. Accordingly, the price for a traditionally-made icewine can be US$50 or more for a half-bottle.

Tricks to produce icewine fraudulently range from harvesting the grapes early and freezing them, to using bulk icewine juice that didn’t measure up to the strict regulation standards, adding sugar and food coloring to a low-grade sweet wine and counterfeiting labels from well-known producers.

These fakes have infiltrated the icewine market, especially in the Far East. Dufour observed: “There are no official figures documenting the size of this fake category, but from my personal experience, at least a third of the icewines that I see in several Asian markets are not authentic.”

He adds: “Our biggest concern is that a consumer purchases one of these ‘fake icewines’ in a retail store – and at a very high price point – and as such, assumes that they are buying an authentic icewine.

"Often what they find is little more than sugary water, or worse, so their experience of an icewine is not positive, and they are turned off of the category as a whole.”

Laura Pullman, 20.01.2011