Introducing our wine detective: Philip Moulin

In the early 2010s, our drive to help collectors build the world’s best cellars led us to one conclusion: we needed an in-house wine authentication expert. This person would be responsible for tracing the history and provenance of each bottle that entered our cellars. And so, Philip Moulin embarked on a journey to become Berry Bros. & Rudd’s very own wine detective.

Now, nearly 14 years on, Philip talks us through his role, detailing how he checks quality, authenticates every bottle we handle, and plays a key role in preventing counterfeits from entering our warehouses.

How do you determine which wines are accepted into our warehouses?

Day to day, I determine whether wines are good enough to be allowed into our warehouses and be sold by us – whether that be on BBX, our fine wine exchange, or through auctions. A lot of the wines we deal with are worth tens of thousands of pounds a bottle, and hundreds of thousands of pounds a case.

We have a check-in process for all customers’ wines coming into the business. Where we have a direct relationship with a producer, we’re not so concerned. Our potential Achilles’ heel is customers’ stock: the wines have often been sold by another source, and they’re sent to us with the intent of being sold on to other Berry Bros. & Rudd collectors.

When a customer says, “We’d like to send this in for storage and sell it”, we check each bottle meticulously, to ensure its quality and provenance.

How did your role first come about?

In 2010, we launched BBX – our fine wine exchange – which was the catalyst for needing an authentication specialist to check the quality of the stock. And so, I began working in wine authentication in 2011. By then, the need had become greater: we began accepting stock into the company which hadn’t originally been sold by us, as we were allowing customers to bring their own wines into Berry Bros. & Rudd for storage.

If we were confident in each bottle’s quality and provenance, we’d allow it to be listed on BBX and traded on the platform. The fact that customers could list their own stock opened up the potential for reputational damage. So, Simon Berry (our former Chairman) and Max Lalondrelle (our Bordeaux Buyer) decided that we needed someone to be as clued up as possible on wine fraud. I was tasked with getting myself as up to speed as possible in the field.

In the beginning, I genuinely didn’t know where to start. In 2012, I enrolled on a course with the University of Portsmouth on counter-fraud studies – absolutely fascinating, most of it not connected to wine, but it gave me a grounding in authentication and counterfeiting.

During the same year, there was an increased awareness that counterfeiting in the fine wine world was becoming more of a problem. It coincided with the arrest of Rudy Kurniawan, who was accused of counterfeiting millions of dollars’ worth of fine wine over 10 years. We enlisted the help of other experts in the field, to teach us what they knew – as well as go through the stock in our warehouse. I learnt what to look for, what equipment I needed to be using – everything needed to guarantee the provenance of each bottle. In the end, I was the first person to do this job for a merchant in the UK.

What do you look out for when checking a bottle?

The first stage of checking is knowing where the stock is coming from. Once the wines arrive at the warehouse, our team look over the stock meticulously.

One of the first things we check is the case: we’re looking for incorrect stamps, or if it’s secured with the wrong band. That suggests it might already have been opened. We also look for any signs of tampering on the exterior of the case. Sometimes, we’ve discovered that vintages have been sanded off, with a new stamp applied over the old vintage. It’s not always the end of the world, but it suggests that it’s not the original case; therefore, it’s not allowed onto BBX.

That’s before we’ve even opened the case. Once open, we go through a checklist of looking at the capsules, the labels and the fabric of the glass. That includes the imprinting on the punt (the bottom of the bottle), as each property has its own unique way of stamping and we know what to look for.

Then, we look at the capsules, looking for any tell-tale signs that it may have been tampered with. Has it been chipped? Has the wax been reapplied? For instance, Rudy Kurniawan would sometimes cut a tiny slit into the capsule to make it easier to take off, before reapplying it using glue. These cuts are done very well, and are incredibly hard to see.

Next, we look at the labels. That means analysing the quality of the paper, the quality of the printing and the fundamentals of what is actually on the label.

We have an electric microscope, which we use to examine the labels in greater detail. We have a blue light tool for checking holograms and holographic flecking within producer labels. We also use an old Rudy Kurniawan fake bottle of Château Lafleur for training purposes. It came to us via an ex-Berry Bros. & Rudd employee in Hong Kong, who had managed to get the bottle from a client of his. We have a case of these fake bottles in the warehouse which have become indispensable for training.

What are producers doing now to protect themselves?

One of the techniques used by producers to make it hard for anyone to replicate their bottles is called “microprinting”. For example, we compared a real and fake bottle of 2009 Le Pin. One of the things that stood out to us on the real label was a border of miniscule text, printed between two red lines forming a border.

To the naked eye, it looks like a filled-in red border. But when you magnify it 300 times, you’ll see that it actually reads the names of the owners’ children, repeated over and over. The fake label, on the other hand, shows just a red blur. The fake is good enough to pass on a quick glance, but when you compare the two beside each other, they stand in stark contrast.

Other anti-fraud techniques being used include QR codes, invisible inks and the use of holograms. Some producers are also inserting traceable chips into the fabric of their labels and beneath the capsules. This allows the customer to scan the chip on their phone and confirm whether the bottle is real.

From 2013, Petrus invested a lot in anti-fraud protection. They have 12 different techniques at use within their labels and the capsules of the bottle. Notably, they have their own unique ink – made by the company that produces the ink for the US dollar note – which only they can verify.

Another increasingly popular technique being used are “proof tags”, which are small stickers that seal the capsule to the glass of the bottle. The top of the tag has a layer of foil containing a unique formation of small air bubbles, which are produced in the heating process and are impossible to replicate.

Despite the development of these technologies and anti-fraud techniques, no one has been able to completely eradicate the problem of wine counterfeiting. You have to go to a lot of trouble to identify a fake bottle, which most people don’t necessarily have time for.

This is why the role of wine authentication expert is a vital one in the wine business.