How to tell if a wine is fake when in China

One of my favorite “hobbies” is to drink wine. I have developed quite a taste for this simple libation. It makes me relax, feel talkative, and helps me appreciate the food that I eat with it. It is a wonderful, and most excellent, beverage to share with friends and family alike.

That being said, you really need to be careful in what you drink. For, I live in China, and there are all kinds of “fake” products that will tempt you and poison you if you are not careful.

Don’t misunderstand. The Chinese police take making fake wines quite seriously and if you are caught making and selling fake wines the punishment can be severe. It can vary from a few years in jail to “death plus three”.

"Death plus three" is a criminal sentence that means that you are sentenced to death. However, you will live in a hard labor prison for three years where your organs may be harvested as needed by society.

Let’s talk about this for a while and the techniques that I have used to avoid bad and dangerous wines…

Introduction

This post is an elaboration of a response that I gave to a fellow expat who asked how to select wines in China. It was a simple enough question. It went something like this; “How do I choose a wine in China?“.

Well, as a wine drinker, as opposed to a wine connoisseur, I responded in the only way that I knew how. I simply told the lass that you need to be careful. I told her that the high prices for wine in China has led to an environment whereas there can be a sea of fake wines that you must avoid.

She responded;

Oh wow I am completely shocked at this answer! I had no idea some of the wines were fake -- I thought since it's not a heavy liquor, I would be safe! 

I did have a headache for about 2 days last weekend and I wondered why... probably bad wine at Coco Park!! 

So let’s get started…

China is a nation of drinkers. Unlike the United States where there are prohibitions on behaviors, and various rules and laws making it increasingly difficult to drink and socialize. China has none of that. You are free to socialize and drink and smoke to your heart’s content.

In China you can drink alcohol without restraint.

They do not care if you kill yourself in the process. It is not the business of the government to protect you from yourself. If you are going to drink yourself to death, the government simply says “what ever you want, just don’t hurt anyone else in the process“.

This is quite different from the United States.

In the United States, laws have become tools to enforce behavior. All sorts of things are enforced. From having to wear a seat-belt, to having “child-resistant” caps on medicine bottles. America is a land of policed behavior with severe punishments for non-compliance.

Of course, all “vices” are restricted. Alcohol, being a vice, is restricted, taxed, and used as a control vector to guarantee mass compliance.

Some of the restrictions that are placed on Americans, in regards to alcohol, are;

1. Road sobriety check-points, mandatory breathalyzer tests, and road-blocks.
2. Companies that fire and fine you for being hungover. Such as GM.
3. HR Set aside rules that require smoking off the property, or drinking during lunch hours.
4. Insurance plans that penalize social behavior such as drinking.
5. Requirements for proof of age to purchase.
6. Laws on “open container carry”.

China doesn’t have any of these restrictions on behavior. It does not force people to behave in a structured manner “for the good of the nation“. Rather it’s laws are similar to British Common Law.

Instead of enforcing behavior, they seek restitution for victims. It is a completely different mind-set.

The history of hard alcohol in China

China has over 5000 years of drinking hard, playing hard and working hard.

That is not going to stop by some progressive busybody with a catchy slogan, a nice song and attractive television personalities. In fact, there were times when Chinese SJW’s tried to do exactly this…

These social justice warriors tried to take over. They tied to make a nice progressive utopia where a new way of acting, dress, and behavior were implemented. They did this numerous times in the past. Perhaps you, the reader, have heard of some of the attempts…

• The Cultural Revolution in 1966
• The “Democracy” movement of the 1990’s.
• The “FalunGong” movement.

Each time, the movement by Social Justice Warriors fell apart. In their wake was left ruin and destruction. The Chinese government would have none of that. It no longer will accept Social Justice Warriors to disrupt social harmony.

Here are some interesting posts on the subject if you wish to explore this venue further…

• When the SJW movement took control of China
• Democrat Busybodies and the Destruction of Freedom
• Freedom and Liberty in China
• What happens when you try to implement Diversity Initiatives in China

If the government suspects that you are a SJW, they will come after you. Trying to upset the social order, one that has been perfected for over 5000 years, is considered a serious crime. It is a crime against everything that China and the Chinese people stand for. You are thus considered a criminal of the highest order; a social misfit, with distorted views of your role in society, and a dangerous threat to those around you.

Ask how the SJW’s captured during the “Democracy Movement” have to say about their life today in 2018…

How wine is drunk

The Chinese do not drink wine like people in the West drink wine. They do not sip it, and enjoy the texture and flavor. No. Instead they drink it like they drink traditional 53° white wine; they gulp it down. They drink it down glass, by glass in big gulps.

I of course, only do so as part of business, and other Chinese social occasions. For instance like when I am with family, or with friends. At home, I drink wine like a normal person. I sip it. I taste it. I inhale the aroma and sample the complex textures.

In China, both red wine and baijiu is quaffed down.

The key here is an understanding that the Chinese culture places a great deal of importance in your ability to handle yourself when “shit face” drunk. Thus, the taste and aroma of a wine is of far less importance than the ability to get you staggering drunk.

In Chinese culture, Western wines opened up a new avenue to business and social get together’s. Here, instead of drinking 53° white wine we can drink 11° red wine. We can get drunk slower, and thus expand our time together for better fellowship and more time for social bonding.

It’s a win-win.

China opens to the West

China has always been partial to alcohol. It really doesn’t matter what it is. People have been drinking everything from beer to snake wine for many centuries. Long, long before the formation of the United States, Chinese poets were rowing out on lakes and offering drunken toasts to the moon.

There isn’t any political correctness here. If you are an adult, or a businessman, you drink. It’s pretty simple.

The Chinese have made all kinds of different types of wine and libations to suit their desire for strong alcoholic beverages. They have snake wine, frog wine, and all kinds of exotic herbal beverages that vary in taste and complexity.

Chinese adapt to Western wine

China has long been a friend to Western alcohol. Whether it was Shanghai in the 1920’s or Hong Kong and Macao, the Chinese love for Western wines and alcohol has continued unabated. When the United States had prohibition and forced everyone to hide their love of alcohol, the Chinese were merrily drinking themselves under the table.

For the most part, the Chinese have had access to alcohol from all over the world for a long time. This includes the leadership of Mr. Mao who implemented hard-core communist progressive laws, rules and behaviors. While the revolutionary zeal was taking hold on university campuses all over the nation, and inspirational slogans were being painted on large flowing red banner, the average Chinese family was happily quaffing down alcohol in spectacular amounts.

For the most part, these moments were “white wine” moments. Or to use a more appropriate term “moonshine”.

However, China underwent a drastic change when Mr. Deng started to implement his reforms.

You know, Americans have no idea. Absolutely ZERO idea about what Mr. Deng did. Oh, maybe one in a thousand heard of “Mr. Deng reforms”, but that is a rare person indeed.

What Mr. Deng did was threw out all the social policies, and economic policies of communism. That’s right. He implemented, what could best be termed “American Hard-right Conservative Free-Market” policies. Though you will NEVER hear the left-leaning mainstream American media ever talk about this.

One of the reasons why China is so successful is simply because of Mr. Deng. Every school child in China knows about the important role that Mr. Deng had. Everyone in China knows this. Though, of course, they don’t call it “American brand of conservatism”. They call it “Communism with Chinese systems”.

A name is just a name.

A demand is created

Once China “opened up” and free-market trade was promoted, a middle class of people suddenly appeared. Under a socialist nation, whether it is socialist-lite or hard-core full-on communist, there are only two classes of people. This is the [1] government ruling class, and [2] the workers that serve them. (Which pretty much explains the mentality of those in the American oligarchy.)

However, under a free-market society, society does not stratify. It blends. There becomes bands of society.It isn’t a homogenized society under a central government where everyone is”equal”. It is a society that is an aggregate of different people, different cultures, and different lifestyles.

Seemingly over-night a middle class appeared in China.

This middle class had an enormous appetite for Western goods. People started to dress better, enjoy the finer things in life, and strive to build up their lives from a socialist utopia where they could never be given the opportunity. For once the government has you in it’s little box, the odds that you will ever leave it, are increasingly remote.

The Chinese saw the opportunity and seized it.

Suddenly a demand for all things “Western” was created. The Chinese wanted to act, dress and be American. They started to copy American clothing, fashions, and ways of doing things.  The desire was intense, and everyone wanted to be like Americans.

Which is why outside elements (non-Chinese) started to instigate the “Pro-Democracy” movement. here, Chinese social justice warriors, with financial backing from outside of China, tried to force China to implement “democracy” inside of China. The only thing was, of course, that they did not want democracy, they wanted an authoritarian socialist government with the name of democracy with them in charge.

Ok. Ok, I’m getting off the subject again. But to know China, you need to know what has been going on for the last number of decades or so…

Fake wine flourishes

Ah wine. It is good with everything.

With the middle class, came the desire for red wine. Not only will the Chinese enjoy white wine, but they will also enjoy red wine. And what a demand that it created! The Chinese demand for red wine was off the charts! Everyone was drinking it.

And…

And, with demand came fakes. People started to create fake wine, made out of all kinds of ingredients. They discovered that they could recycle imported bottles, and even have local factories make look-alike bottles. The ability to make a copy of a wine label was child’s-play. They could  take the cheapest white wine, mix it with grape juice and sell it under some kind of American, French or Spanish brand and sell it for 1000x the cost to make it.

• 10,000 bottles of fake wine found in house in Wenzhou
• Chinese counterfeiting industry
• Wine counterfeiting ring broken up
• Fake wine discovered when winery asked to verify
• Half of all the Lafite sold in China are fake
• Making Fake Wines is an Industry

Communities share fake wine recipes

First off, let me make one thing perfectly clear; China has some most excellent locally produced wines. You can get a nice ChengYu or a GreatWall, both very common throughout China and enjoy a good budget bottle of wine. You can also get wines from smaller independent Chinese wineries that are quite magnificent.

I don’t buy wines by price tag. I look for a good, and real wine. I look for local or well known wines that are difficult to fake. I drink wine for the taste. So, with this being said, I am certainly not a wine connoisseur. Instead, I am a consumer of good real wine.

I like a good real wine. If it tastes good, than that is good enough for me.

But, you know, fake wines are a real problem. Here in China, fake goods are everywhere. Oh, yes. It was much worse a few years back. The Corruption Police out of Beijing has really clamped down on all this nonsense. They are going after all the evil doers. They are armed, trained and go after them like the IRS goes after an American taxpayer. They are that ruthless!

The thing is that there are entire communities that share recipes on making fake wines, and a network of distributors that purloin these fake goods to the consumer. This is quite an elaborate organization and consists of all sorts of people doing all sorts of questionable activities.

The police step in

In China, the police have a duty to protect the people. This is different than in the United States where the police have the duty of enforcing behavior.

So instead of arresting a five year old girl for selling lemonade, trying to seize someone’s children because the 11 year old was walking alone from school one day, and fining you for having dangling plastic “horse balls” on the hitch of your pickup truck, the Chinese will devote their time towards making China safe.

They have a long road ahead of them.

I will say this, In the United States we NEVER have to worry about fake wines. We never worry about fake beer, fake cigarettes, and fake cigars. We have come to accept this as normal, without giving the American culture the credit it deserves. People, America is what it is because of the people who live there.

Good or bad, right or wrong. It is the people that determine how a country works.

The underground market persists

Like it or not, this ability to make fake wine is a profitable venture. There are many who will happily concoct a few hundred cases of fake wine so that they can buy a new car or two. It’s difficult to eradicate.  However, I can honestly say that the situation is much better than it was just five years ago.

Back then, you could not tell at all the difference between a fake wine and a real wine. Often most of the wines in a store might be completely fake. That all started to turn around in 2014 by the massive police crackdowns and raids in Dongguang.

The dangers of fake wine

The people who make these fake wines do everything from relabeling cheap local wine to concocting a toxic mixture of factory chemicals, and rat poison. You really don’t want to put any of this nonsense into your body. It could hurt you terribly.

The problem with fake wine is that you don’t know what is in it. Many times the chemicals that are put inside are done so for color, appearance, and to create the illusion that the liquid is real wine. I have heard of all kinds of things being added to the mixture. I have heard of rancid Duran fruit, I have heard of locomotive degreaser, and rubbing alcohol added to the “wine” to give it that rosy glow when sipped. You do not want to put any of these chemicals in your body. You could develop cancer, get a brain tumor or have your dick fall off.

What ever you do, stay away from fake wines.

How to avoid fake wine

Here’s some rules of thumb that I use…

Yellow tail is a fine import and it is real. It is from Australia. You can get it at the “D” supermarket. Prices fluctuate. Expect to pay at least 60 RMB a bottle. Normal prices are 75 RMB a bottle. Of course, I drink by the case, so I am always looking for real wine at decent prices. You can always find 350 RMB bottles of wine, and I think that you are just throwing your money away at that.

Great Wall has a good dry red wine. But there are many fakes out there. Expect to pay from 65 to 75RMB a bottle at a large name supermarket such as ren ren le. It’s the real deal and pretty good as well.

This is what a bottle or REAL “Great Wall” wine  looks like.  Note the top of the wine. When you remove the cork, you will notice that the cork is plastic synthetic. It is not real cork. Real cork is cheap and it is used in fake wines.

Great wall has many types of wines. They have bought up smaller vineyards, and often sell the cheaper wine under their logo. You have to be careful.

You can tell a fake bottle by the following guidelines… If you are sharing a bottle with another, a real bottle will make you feel warm. Two bottles will make you feel good, but not drunk. You will feel drunk on the third bottle.  A fake bottle of wine will be quite different.

You will get drunk on the first bottle when you are sharing it. By the second bottle if your partner is sitting up with drool coming out of their mouth it is certainly fake. The next day both of you will have splitting headaches, and really bad fake wine will result in messed up stomach and body for at least a week.

Real wine will NEVER give you a headache the next day even if you drink four bottles yourself. Although, you might “potato head” for the duration of the morning.

If you buy in quantity, you can get real wine down to 200 RMB/case. Which is around 33 RMB/ bottle. But you will need to drink a few bottles first before you can tell the difference. In china, price has no bearing on the quality of the wine. Only the store’s reputation does.

Ten days ago I paid 71 RMB for a bottle of “Great Wall” that I felt funny about, but I figured that it must of been ok because of the name and the price. I was wrong. It took two days to get rid of the headache.

Fake wines are a REAL problem in China. If you drink like I do, you can really mess up yourself really bad by drinking that poison. Lord only knows what goes in it. I have read stories that they use rubbing alcohol, automobile antifreeze, oven cleaner, and horse tranquilizers to get the desired flavors. They take grape juice, and add the chemicals. and age it in a kind of heated tub in the back of a pig farm, and then bottle it in reused foreign wine bottles. YUCK!

Great wall has many types and shapes and sizes. But remember, only go to a good reliable grocery store, and buy the real stuff. Not the fake stuff. This is why most Chinese prefer either Beer or White Wine. You cannot fake either of them, but you can fake red wine.

A “copy cat” fake is a fake wine dressed up to look like a real wine. As most Chinese wines are unknown wines with made up names, labels and points of origin. You can not tell from the bottle shape. You cannot tell from the bottle labels, or seals. You cannot tell from the boxes that the wines come from. The problem is that all of the international wines get their labels, bottles, corks, and boxes out of China. So it is easy for the Chinese to make doubles.

Anyways, I once got some fake “Sharaz” that was Yellow Tail from a good store. So even if you know what you are doing, you can get tricked. You have got to be careful.

Always remember the cork. If the cork is made out of plastic or a synthetic, then it is probably good. If it is a made out of a real cork, then it is a fake. The reason for this is that anyone can by cork. It is cheap and easy to get. Synthetic cooks are expensive, and regulated. There is also a MOQ (minimum order quantity) with is often much larger than the volume of the fake wine batch.

If you want to get a good bottle that won’t cause any of your internal organs to collapse, then stick to beer, JinJiu, or white wine. Beware, some of the fakes are REALLY good and taste quite good. You might not realize it, but there are complete families that trade the secrets of good fake tasting wines. They improve their mixture over time, and some of the best can sell some very good tasting products that can bring them a lot of money. … Provided that only one or two bottles are drunk by non-drinkers.

Some rules of thumb. All wine from bars, or from the Internet are fake.  All wines that come from Spain are fake. All wines that are in a store (even a good store) that are “on sale” and they only have one pallet of it (maybe fifty cases) are fake…fake…fake.

Stick to what you know. Stick to known brands, reputable stores and sellers.

Levels of fake

The quality of fake products are stratified.

• Level 1 – The best fakes. Real wine from a local producer is placed in expensive bottles and sold as the expensive brand.
• Level 2 – Awkward nastiness. Real cheap local wine is diluted down with water, and dangerous non-potable alcohol is added to increase the potency of the beverage. This stuff can make you sick, and give you headaches that can last for days.
• Level 3 – Horrible shit. Very little real wine is used. Instead a concoction of different local medicines, and liquids are compiled together. This can consist of such things as cantaloupe rinds and liquidized horse feed mixed with cheap denatured alcohol. This stuff will make you physically sick, and can cause you to be hospitalized if you binge drink with it.

Summary

Fake wine takes away from the beauty of life. Some assholes, and they really are assholes, are trying to profit at your expense. Fake wine is a problem.

Keep in mind the most important rule of wine.

The Rule of Wine
Wine should be drank with friends and family alongside some fine delicious food. The most important aspect is happy times together.

Wine should be enjoyed with friends and family. I think a nice song, and maybe a dance is also appropriate. Drink wine while eating food. I like fresh crunchy loaves of bread. I like nice chunks of cheese and a spread of olives, cutup fresh heirloom tomatoes, onions, lettuce, and peppers. Life is too short not to appreciate the better things in life.

And what is better than spending time with your friends and your family? Not too much else, I am afraid.

I think that wine goes great with food. When you are together with friends and family, the wine really makes the times cheerful. Our faces get red and rosy and  we talk about our days, our opinions, and our dreams. I especially think that foods with sauces go great with wine. I really enjoy a nice “Italian style” dinner with a few bottles of wine. Oh baby, yes!

There are all kinds of foods that go well with wine. I like to think that sandwiches go best with an icy cold beer, but there are many, many foods that go well with wine. For instance,  How about an Italian Grinder?

Fun Links

• Fun facts about Chinese Wine
• China gets a taste for Australian wine
• 53% of Chinese teenagers admit that they drink wine at family dinners
• Chinese guide on how to pick wine for a wedding

Take Aways

• As I get older, I come to appreciate the importance of wine.
• Wine is wonderful with food.
• Wine is served best when it is served with friends.
• Fake wine is a problem in China.
• There are precautions that a person can take to avoid fake wine.
• Remember the Rule of Wine.

FAQ

Q: Why are there so many fake products in China?
A: This is because it is profitable. Many of the fake products are quite good and functional. For instance, there are “grades” of a fake product. You can have a fake LV handbag that is made from the same material, and the same suppliers as the real LV. This is a top grade fake. Then you can have a terrible cheap knock off that doesn’t look anything at all like a LV bag. It’s all a matter or degree.

Q: Can you drink a fake bottle of wine and not get sick?
A: Yes. There are many fakes that are just simply local wines repackaged into expensive bottles, expensive labels and expensive price tags. The buyer is thus cheated. He is paying steak prices for dogfood.

Q: What is the Rule of Wine?
A: Wine should be drank with friends and family alongside some fine delicious food. The most important aspect is happy times together.

Q:  What if I don’t want to drink wine?
A: That is fine too. You can go ahead and call some friend over and do something else. The important thing is to spend time together with people who are meaningful to you.  Make a difference and appreciate the time that you all are spending together.

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Notes

1. Created 26AUG18.
2. Content completed 27AUG18.
3. SEO review 27AUG18.
4. Published 27AUG18.