French vineyard continues with bottle tagging push

French wine estate Château Latour has tagged its latest batch of releases with a Prooftag seal to identify genuine bottles.

Widespread counterfeiting of high-end wines, particularly in China, has pushed vineyards to add authentication measures to their goods. Château Latour was an early adopter of Prooftag, which marks each bottle neck with a code that can be entered on the website to authenticate the wine.

Last year fellow Bordeaux-based winemaker Chateau Lafite Rothschild also committed to using the anti-counterfeit device, Decanter reports. Observers have said there is more Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1982 in China than was ever made, owing to widespread faking of the vintage.

The responses of French vineyards have been part technological, part communication. Many of the premium brands have joined Château Latour in adding anti-counterfeiting technology, while also trying to raise awareness of fakes.

Chateau Lafite Rothschild, for example, has an account on popular Chinese social networking site Weibo that it uses to talk with wine consumers in the country.