The 105th China Food and Drinks Fair Autumn edition kicked off in Tianjin on October 15 (picture credit: Xinhua)

The 105th China Food and Drinks Fair Autumn edition kicked off in Tianjin on October 15 (picture credit: Xinhua)

Derided by trade professionals as "Disneyland of fakes", the scale of knockoffs seen at this year's Autumn edition of China Food & Drinks Fair in Tianjin is staggering. We have rounded up some of the worst offenders here from fake DRC to counterfeit Petrus.

Languedoc Petrus and Petrus second label

Look familiar? Yep, that’s a brazen imitation of the peerless Petrus in Pomerol. The wine has the look and trappings of the renowned Bordeaux estate but the one shown above in fact a Languedoc wine.

The wine is apparently made by a company called BCMOEL, whose Chinese name is coincidentally the same as Petrus (柏翠). What’s confounding based on images supplied to us by sources is that the counterfeiters did not even bother to standardize information at all for the same wine.

In some cases, the BCMOEL Petrus is identified as a second label of Petrus, which is non-existent of course. On the 2017 BCMOEL back label, it says the wine is produced by OENO TERRA SARL and distributed by Beijing petrus international import and export company (北京柏翠庄园国际进出口有限公司).

The 2019 vintage comes with a very bold word of “Genuine” written just below BCMOEL and is produced by a company called SARL VIGNOBLES DUBARD. Both however are now made in Bordeaux, not Languedoc, and share the same distributor – Beijing petrus international import and export company.

Despite its shoddy imitations, the company’s booth has seen no shortage of visitors and clients.

Above all things, it promises a RMB 300,000 (US$50,000) worth of gift for every RMB 20,000 (US$3130) order, a strategy that any business-minded merchants certainly would fail to comprehend. But again, nothing seems to make much sense here, so what difference does it make?

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