Thirst Thoughts Blog

The news that authorities in the Chinese province of Fujian carried out raids and uncovered 40,000 bottles of fake Lafite and Penfolds was an interesting one. Firstly, how do you fake wine? I mean it is not like a pair of Levi’s or Nike Trainers where you can get it to look pretty much the same replicating taste is far more challenging. Secondly would people even notice if you got the bottle and the label right?

When the world’s most expensive ‘dram’ or measure of whisky was found to be a fake, it was not the drinker that complained but the whisky experts alerted by the bottle’s label and the cork.   https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-41695774

One of the secrets of the restaurant trade is that if you wanted to make a diner believe that they were drinking a very high-end wine, you just need to add a small measure of port to the bottle. If you were to ask students of the ‘Placebo effect’ however even that would not be necessary and that just by putting a high price tag on the wine, the Chinese fraudsters could still deliver a very premium experience.  The ‘placebo effect’ was a phenomenon seen in patients with medical conditions but was widened to apply to the marketing world in a journal by Shiv, Carmon, & Ariely.  

In 2017, the effect was tested by researchers at the University of Bonn who put 30 people in an MRI scanner and then gave them three samples of identical modestly priced wine, telling them that one was priced at 3 euros one at 6 Euros and one at or 18 euros per bottle. As you would expect, the guinea pigs ranked the sample listed as the most expensive as the best tasting and the cheapest as the worst tasting but what was surprising were the results from the scanner. It seemed that the sample that was labelled as the most premium really did activate the parts of the brain associated with pleasure and reward. The results demonstrated that the higher the price the better it really does taste.     

You can then conclude that in future, anyone in China or anywhere else in the world looking to counterfeit wine, the more that you charge for the wine the less likely people will notice. In an age where there is steady trend towards premiumisation in the drinks world, it is a lesson worth taking on board if you are launching a new drink.