How can we be sure we are not buying fake bottles?

In recent years there have been multiple "fakes" on the market of the established top houses from France, Italy, and Spain, among others. There is much more Petrus, Tignanello, Ornellaia, and Vega Sicilia on the market than has ever been made, to name just a few. Until a few years ago, the fake bottles were often around the high Super Tuscans and the top from Bordeaux and Bourgogne. However, in recent years, it has also frequently been seen with the Napa wines from the USA, the well-known Ribera del Duero, and Rioja houses, and the Brunello's, especially from 2015 and 2016 (very high ratings).

Grandcruwijnen only buys directly from the wineries or the official importers. Be very wary of offers "too good to be true" you run the risk of having a fake bottle with different content. Sometimes this is almost impossible to check and to distinguish from genuine, and the bottles are identical. The high-end wineries often have seals, holograms, etc., with which you can check the wine for authenticity on the site of the relevant winery. If this is possible, we will also mention this with the wine.

And even if the top offer is a real bottle, you never know what journey a bottle has been through. Wines can sometimes be a year in motion and eventually arrive at you from warm trucks, shipping containers, and unconditioned wineries. We know extreme examples of containers with the well-known champagne houses that are sometimes shipped from port to port for a year and are eventually sold well below the cost to get rid of them, and then you see a great offer, but in the end, the content is very doubtful. Our motto is "Buy your wines from a reliable wine merchant" and be very careful of those great offers from sometimes very well-known consumer wine platforms whose journey the wines have made cannot be traced.