Two kiwi companies are using forensic science on wine for the first time, to verify where it’s made, in a major step to tackling counterfeit vintages.
From the Rocky slopes of Waikari in Canterbury to a boardroom in London - Pyramid Valley Wines have travelled up to 19,000km but up until now, there's been no way to prove their origin.
A bottle of Pyramid Wine costs over $100 and buyers want to know if it is from Pyramid valley when the label says it is.
“The only thing that was able to be verified was the bottle, so people have put things on bottles like RF-ID units and special tags and now NFTs are moving with bottles around the place but nothing has been able to verify the contents of the bottle,” said Steve Smith of Pyramid Valley Wines.
Pyramid Valley Wineries has partnered with another kiwi business to do just that.
Based out of Dunedin, Oritain’s been working to do the same with food and fabric companies for years.
“The science stems from the criminal forensic field - so identifying where bodies have come from in homicides through to ballistics identification,” said Stew Whitehead of Oritain.
“What we've done is adopted that same methodology and applied it with some high-level statistics that we've developed - a lot of it in-house."
It's groundbreaking work for an industry that has a big counterfeit problem.
While the extent of the problem’s not known for sure, some experts say 20% of wine sold around the world could be incorrectly labelled.
The science is proving remarkably accurate, wine can be traced back to vineyards planted just 100m apart.
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