600+ Submissions to Date for Wine Authenticity Project: Additional Samples Encouraged

Thanks to Wine Institute members, more than 600 diverse samples have been received to date for the Wine Authenticity Project, an initiative working to ensure a bottle of wine’s legitimacy, help combat fraud and counterfeits, and most importantly, protect a wine’s integrity. Additional information on this effort can be found on the Wine Authenticity Project web page in the Member Hub. The project is supported by a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant and Wine Institute is seeking funding to create a multi-year project.

With the help of submitted wine samples, a U.S. wine variety database will be created and serve as a set of technical criteria for the global regulatory community to determine authenticity. A comprehensive database also will help American wine to be more easily identifiable when being reviewed to enter markets overseas.

Obtaining samples are key to achieving a strong database. There are private and regulatory laboratories throughout the world using a technique known as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) that can potentially verify a wine’s origin and variety. The wine sample’s spectra or digital signature — which contains hundreds of signals that provide information about its composition — will be analyzed with statistics and chemometrics.

This important set of data will provide a reference for wine varieties and wine production regions. It will not be able to identify a wine from a specific producer or brand since the association with that winery will be anonymized.

Wine samples must be at least 95% of one grape variety, with 11 varieties accepted: Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio/Pinot Gris, Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec, Petit Sirah, Pinot Noir, Syrah and Zinfandel.

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