Prooftag, A New Way To Combat Wine Fraud
Wine fraud has been in the news lately. First there was the story in the New Yorker on the infamous Jefferson wines then an article in Slate questioned just how big a problem wine fraud was. Now Decanter reports on a new solution for the problem of wine fraud. A seal called Prooftag is being used by a few producers. The seal is a small strip that runs from a metal capsule onto the glass bottle. Once the seal is broken the capsule is destroyed. The seal has both a reference number and a plastic square with a unique pattern, both of which can be doublechecked on the web to assure the buyer they have bought the real thing. As the article in Decanter mentions, the price per bottle is still a bit high (between €0.20-€1 per bottle) and may be putting some winemakers off but it is expected that as more people adopt the system the price will go down.
