Chinese ‘icewine’ infuriates Canadians
When a friend complimented Niagara winemaker Allan Schmidt for successfully cracking the icewine market in mainland China, Schmidt dismissed it: He wasn’t selling his wine in China, he said.
But the friend persisted. He said he was sure he’d seen Schmidt’s Vineland Estates icewine for sale there.
“Again, I told him: ‘No, you must be mistaken,’ ” Schmidt recalls.
Then the friend gave him a link to a website.
Schmidt was stunned.
There, a Chinese company was selling a product called Vineland icewine, boasting of a joint venture with a Canadian partner and, to top it all off, using a panoramic view of Schmidt’s own winery on its web page.
“They’d taken it right off our website,” Schmidt says in a telephone interview. “I was upset.”
Four years on, and after spending $60,000 in legal fees trying to protect his trademark in China, he is still upset.
The Chinese promise him a hearing — but not until 2011.
“The whole experience has just left a really bad taste in my mouth,” the winemaker says.
China is battling a flood of fakes, from medicines and vaccines, to cellphone cards and Olympic souvenirs.
But when ambitious Chinese counterfeiters fix their sights on foreign manufacturers, no one is safe — not Rolex, not Tag Heuer, and certainly not Canadian icewines.
“Chinese counterfeiters can be incredibly clever,” says Vera Sung, a trademark lawyer with the Hong Kong law firm of Oldham Li and Nie. “And the more Canadian icewines grow in price and prestige, the more likely they are to attract counterfeiters.”
The impact has hit hard: sales of Canadian icewine in China have plummeted 60 per cent from highs earlier in the decade, according to the Ontario Wine Council.
The problem, says Sung, arises from an emerging Chinese middle class that sees icewine as a status symbol, but can’t distinguish real from fake.
“The problem is, they don’t understand what genuine icewine is.”
The same might be said of those producing the knockoffs.
This week, Han Ruabing, of Tianjin Canadian Ltd., makers of Select Late Harvest Gordo Canadian Icewine, defended the quality of her product explaining that they dilute wine concentrate, shipped “directly” from Canada, with only the best quality water.
“Only pure water,” she said.
The problem is that real icewine is neither made from concentrate, nor added water — nor, for that matter, with “late harvest” grapes.
Real icewine is produced with grapes frozen on the vine, long after the late harvest period has passed.
Nevertheless, knock-off “Canadian icewine” can be found for sale through a distributor in the heart of Beijing, complete with a tiny red maple leaf adorning its label.
But it isn’t just the icewine that is being targeted. There’s even a robust market for knock-off “Canadian ice wine bottles” — without wine.
A company from China’s Shandong province boasts on the Internet that it can produce 300,000 bottles per day.
And fake alcohol production in general in China is so rife that last week the Gansu Province Consumers’ Association appealed to the public to smash their bottles following consumption. The aim? To choke off the cheap supply of empty bottles to the makers of counterfeit alcohol.
Counterfeiters buy them from suppliers who gather them from the garbage.
A Beijing bar manager, who asked not to be identified, told last week of shopping for the deluxe whisky, Chivas Regal.
“The vendor held up two seemingly identical bottles and said, ‘This one is for 70 RMB (about $10). And this one is for 170 RMB (about $25).’ They’re very open about it.”
Marketing fake alcohol is risky. In 2005, a Chinese entrepreneur was sentenced to death after industrial alcohol he sold as drinkable alcohol killed 14.
Cognizant of both health and commercial concerns, Beijing police last week conducted multiple raids on hotels and shops selling fake bottles of Moutai, a famous Chinese liquor.
But despite direct appeals to Chinese authorities from Ontario’s Vintners’ Quality Alliance (VQA) and Ottawa, the counterfeiting of Canadian icewine continues.
“It remains a serious issue,” says Sherri Haigh of the Wine Council of Ontario. More than 70 of its members produce icewine, regarded as the industry’s “flagship” product.
Fake Canadian icewines in China come with improbable names like Maple Dew, Silver Maple, and Toronto Icewine. Their labels are clearly marked “Product of Canada/Produit du Canada,” and adorned with idyllic pictures of Niagara Falls and red, gold or silver maple leafs.
Some claim to be “Ice Wine Style,” a term for which there is no known designation in the world of wine.
Others claim to be the real thing: “Canadian Icewine,” using the trademarked, single-word term that only Canadian wines that meet the VQA’s strict standards may use.
But as Laurie Macdonald, VQA’s executive director points out, having strict guidelines with the force of law in Canada is one thing. Trying to enforce them worldwide is quite another.
She’s aware of the extent of the problem: she has two dozen bottles of fake icewine in her lakeside office in downtown Toronto, almost all from China and Taiwan.
“It’s a tough problem when it’s outside the country,” she says. “There is no magic bullet.”
I occasionally post these sort of news articles because this sort of news simply does not reach China and the Chinese. We, as Chinese, need to be more aware of what is happening in the world so we can adapt and control our place in the world. Unfortunately, China’s news industry is not nearly so robust as those in the West.
Most Chinese know that China produces a lot of fake goods, including alcohol. Most Chinese, however, don’t truly understand just how many enemies they are making because of their disregard to other people’s intellectual property. This makes the world a more dangerous and difficult place for China to succeed in.
People have long regarded America as the land of opportunity. Why does China allow itself to become known as the land of counterfeiting and theft?
What do you think? (Chinese and English welcome)
August 18, 2007
BILL SCHILLER
Toronto Star
BEIJING
Popularity: 8% [?]
Extremely interesting
but why is it under pictures category?
I would like to see a picture collection of unusual fake items!
(I can think of some right now!)