Are you a vintage wine lover? You do not hesitate to spend money for a good bottle of wine recommended by your sommelier. But how to know that the wine you bought is matching with what is described on the label?

The JRC just released a Certified Reference Material (CRM) to verify the authenticity of wines, replacing the previous batch that was sold out due to the high demand.

This CRM, named ERM-AE003, is a chemical substance with specific properties that scientists can use in a lab to calibrate measurements needed to assess a wine's authenticity.

It will allow control laboratories to check if a claim declared on the label is truthful regarding the wine's vintage, geographical origin and/or non-declared sugar addition or dilution with water. The CRM will ensure that correct testing results enable reliable fraud detection.

Reliable measurements for detecting food frauds

Adulteration of wine is a worldwide issue affecting consumers. It is also confronting the honest wine producers with unfair competition, as falsified wines are marketed as high-quality products. 

Wine fraud costs the regular EU wine sector an estimated 1.3 billion euro per year, around 3% of the total sales value.

More than one million litres of counterfeit alcoholic beverages were seized across Europe in 2020 and over 1.7 million in 2021 – the largest quantity being wine – in targeted actions regularly led by the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) as part of joint Europol-Interpol operations called OPSON.

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