Taggants Help Secure Romanian Wine Industry

The Romanian wine sector has started using an authentication technology developed by Eluceda to authenticate the provenance of its regional wines and protect drinkers from potential counterfeits.

Romania’s National Office of Vine and Vitivinicultural Products (ONVPV), which oversees national vineyard management and winemaking in the country, has contracted Eluceda to supply security labels with covert taggant markers that can be detected via a unique machine- readable signature.

Eluceda worked with security label company Eltronis on the labels, which build on the existing designs used by the ONVPV and combine a hologram as an overt security feature with the covert taggant technology.

The partners say the labels can easily be authenticated in the field, for example on store shelves, using one of Eluceda’s pocket-sized Reveal™ detectors. The Reveal range of readers work in hand in glove with Eluceda’s MicroTagg™ and Securitagg™ inorganic taggant materials and are configured according to the ONVPV’s needs to identify genuine wines quickly and securely.

Romania has a long history of wine production and ranks fifth among European countries for areas under vine, and 13th worldwide.

But with a growing market comes the need to protect products from fraudsters seeking to cash in on that success, One sampling study conducted a few years ago found that 45% of wine was either adulterated or suspect, with some bottles laced with sweeteners, dyes, alcohol, water, sugar or other substances added to allow them to be sold for a higher price.

The problem does not seem to have gone away. Earlier this year, Alexandrion Group, the biggest producer and distributor of spirits and wines in Romania, commissioned a video to draw attention to the problem via television and social media channels, saying that ‘the quantities of counterfeit alcohol that are sold not only in Romania, but internationally…remain very high.’ 

By adding authentication technology to wine bottles, the ONVPV is helping to counter this trend, according to Eluceda.