For centuries, swindlers and thieves have been drawn to the highly lucrative world of wine crime. But a new generation of tech-savvy detectives are closing in on them. Ed Cumming meets the men and women trying to put a cork in the business of wine fraud

Down in the cool, dark cellar of Berry Bros & Rudd in St James’s, central London, Philip Moulin arranges some of the world’s most valuable wines on a table. This building has been the wine merchant’s HQ since the company was founded in 1698, and we are in the Holy of Holies, a cellar accessible via fingerprint scanner and several locked gates, where the “directors’ stock” is stored. On one rack lie dusty magnums of Mouton Rothschild 1982, on another a pyramid of golden Château d’Yquem Sauternes. The liquid in this room is worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, if not more. Or at least is, if it is what it claims to be.

Moulin, a genial figure who has been into wine since he was a boy, has sometimes been called a “wine detective”. He is the quality and authentication manager at Berry Bros, who in recent years has specialised in helping to check everything the company buys is up to scratch. Berry Bros is the first British merchant to employ an authenticator; recognition that their reputation is based on trust and that fraudulent wine is a serious problem in the trade. Moulin shows me some of the dozens of ways to check a wine is real without actually tasting it: from the weight of the bottle to the level of the wine within, watermarks, paper with a unique weave, ink with special DNA, microchips in the bottle. Using a magnifying glass, he shows me micro-writing hidden within what look like lines. A UV torch reveals hidden flecks of reflective material.

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Source: The Guardian