18/08/2021

Unlike the pre-internet era, today, a majority of wines and spirits are purchased unseen. Your average alcohol connoisseur usually buys wines or spirits via an eCommerce service by depending solely on the honesty of the seller at the other end. But, in an industry ravaged by counterfeit bottles and scammers, the chances of a fake wine or spirits landing in the lap of a consumer rank extremely high.

But, wine scammers and spirits counterfeiters beware! Chai Vault is here to save the day.

Helmed by the famous wine and spirits fraud expert and founder of WineFraud.com, Maureen Downey; Chai Vault is an anti-fraud solution catering specifically to the wine and spirits industry. The service, first-ever of its kind, is a blockchain-based solution that will allow wine and spirits buyers to discern the authenticity and provenance (place of origin) of wine or spirits bottles before finalizing their purchase, without having to scan or inspect them.

According to Downey, “Most current wine and spirits anti-fraud solutions are single layer or cosmetic. Each has failed to address all necessary elements to protect consumers, vendors and producers.”

Unlike other anti-fraud solutions as Downey states above, a Chai Vault certification — also, transferable by ownership — layers a wine or spirits bottle with multiple low-and-high tech identifiers and crafts unique details for each specific bottle.

The process of obtaining a Chai Vault certification starts with registering a bottle’s details into the Chai Vault system via the company’s The Chai Method (TCM) inspection protocol, which possess more than 90 individual identifiers all ranging from producers to fill level and bottle shape. All this information gets securely stored into a blockchain-protected Chai Vault ledger system. For wines and spirits already floating in the market, a certified TCM Authenticator affixes plastic tamper-proof caplets laced with a combination of RFID, QR code and hologram technology, after establishing the genuinity of the wine or spirits bottle.

In an industry continually plagued by frauds and counterfeiters, Chai Vault is the knight-in-shining-armour it so desperately needs. Chai Vault has already been rolled-out in Amsterdam and Paris. Furthermore, the Black Tie Collection — a multi-million dollar consignment of wines — which will be present in NYC at Zachy’s Auction on December 7th, will also have the Chai Vault certification.

Image courtsey: 20minutesoffame