Producers are trialling new know-how aimed toward reassuring shoppers the wine they’re ingesting is, in truth, the wine they have bought.

Clare Valley’s Grosset Wines proprietor Jeffrey Grosset has based Enseal — a product designed to fight wine fraud, which he says is a major challenge within the trade.

It’s not the primary time that the Clare Valley winemakers have been titled trailblazer in relation to enhancing the standard of their wines.

The area’s winemakers, together with Mr Grosset, have been hailed as leaders in the cork-to-screw-cap movement greater than 20 years in the past.

“As Australian winemakers, we’re into innovation and quality,” he mentioned.

“That’s definitely what the screw caps have been about and what this newest innovation is about as effectively. 

So, how does Enseal work?

Consumers then use their phones to hover over the cap, and essentially, the chip will confirm that the wine and label are a match.

Although Enseal is not commercially available yet, the technology is being trialled in Australia and the UK.

“It’s been patented internationally, and we’re in discussions with two of the most important screw cap makers on this planet,” he said.

The chip may also enable wineries to step away from handbook auditing and transfer to a digitalised course of.

Mr Grosset said that now more than ever, the need for product integrity was crucial.

“The quantity of fraud occurring, not with simply Australian wine, however in every single place, is sort of vital and doubtless loads increased than individuals realise.”

What is wine fraud, precisely?

Wine fraud can be achieved in three ways: refiling empty labelled bottles with unrelated wine, adjusting minor label details, or completely labelling bottles with misrepresented information about the variety, region or vintage.

Mr Grosset said it was difficult to measure to what extent wine fraud was happening to Australian wines internationally.

“We’re lucky in Australia as a result of one of many advantages of screw caps is that they are more durable to faux the wine,” he mentioned.

Technology has a number of advantages

He said Enseal would also give producers the opportunity to connect and share information about the wine with the consumers.

This could be a timeline from when the grapes were picked to when they arrived at their international destination.  

More specifically, information like rainfall data and sunshine hours could also be added.

Mr Grosset said that undertaking Enseal was not an expensive process, especially when weighed against the value of the actual wine.

“In a means, we’re attempting to get individuals used to only taking out their telephones and checking to see that it is what it says it’s and it hasn’t been opened.”

Mr Grosset said that unlike a QR code, which could be easily photocopied, the chip was linked to an immutable record system that could not be replicated.

Winemakers need to protect ‘reputation’

Clare Valley’s Kilikanoon Wines general manager Travis Fuller said he was excited by the advancements that Enseal could provide the wine industry.

“It’s the following evolution for screw cap, which the Clare Valley basically pioneered,” he said.

Mr Fuller said that counterfeiting wine was easy, and when consumers were aware of this, they would want product reassurance.

“It’s fairly rife.”

Mr Fuller said it was up to Australia to protect the “nice popularity” of its wines.

But, he said, the new technology would put a stop to fraud and give producers valuable information about their wine markets.

“You might get to the purpose now with this know-how that when anyone purchases your wine in a retailer in Wimbledon within the UK, you recognize when it has been opened,” Mr Fuller mentioned.