Italian Winemakers Tackle Counterfeiting in Russia

The Consortium for the protection of the Asti, a well-known Italian sparkling wine, has developed special bottle stickers enabling consumers to check if the wine they purchased is genuine. The measure has been taken mainly to protect the Russian customers from fake alcohol.

As the St. Petersburg Times reported on May 11, 2011, each bottle of the genuine Asti wine now features a sticker with a unique code which the customers can enter on the Asti website to obtain more information on the product.

“Russia is one of the top five key consumers of Asti wines in the world, along with the U.S., Germany, Great Britain and Italy itself,” explained Paolo Ricagno, the president of the Asti consortium. “It is high time that we dealt with the counterfeit issue. It is a shame that in Russia, one of our most important markets, the customers, attracted by the good name of Asti, purchase horrendous fakes that smell so bad you wouldn’t want to taste it, and has nothing in common with our product.”

The Asti consortium was established in 1932 to monitor the quality and improve the production of the Asti sparkling wines coming from the Piedmont region in Italy.

For more information, please contact Jelena Jankovic at our Balkan Regional Office.

Source: The St. Petersburg Times, twice-weekly English-language newspaper, based in St. Petersburg, Russia