New Zealand company Oritain, which had developed a forensic fingerprint that can prove the exact location from which a wine comes, is hoping to roll out its groundbreaking tech across the industry.
It’s a move that will excite fine wine enthusiasts all over the world by removing any niggling doubt over a bottle’s provenance. And with the notion of terroir increasingly exciting consumers, being able to scientifically pinpoint, down to a single vineyard block, where a wine comes from, will no doubt give buyers on the secondary market the confidence they need to invest in a wine, and eliminate any suspicions of fraud.
“No winemaker has ever been able to verify the exact location from which their wine comes, until now,” says Sam Lind, head of strategic sales for New Zealand-based tech firm Oritain. “Now, we have the science to guarantee it.”
Until now, the wine industry has been reliant on QR codes or bottle tags to prove the source and journey of a wine; however Oritain’s method works by drilling down on the unique chemical footprint of a terroir, which cannot be recreated. It’s the first analysis applied to the actual liquid inside the bottle on a wide scale rather than to the wine’s packaging.
So how does it work? The process starts by measuring levels of chemical elements specific to the environment in which a wine is made.
“Products chemically reflect their geology,” says Alistair Maling MW, former head winemaker at Villa Maria. “Chemical parameters naturally pass into plants and animals, which absorb them.”
Oritain carefully measures a suite of these trace minerals at site. By taking samples of authentic wines produced in a certain place – this could be a region such as Marlborough, a single vineyard within Marlborough or even a specific block within that vineyard – and analysing the chemical make-up of that sample, you can determine a unique profile that can’t be replicated.
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