Spirits Authenticity – The Route To Simplified Identification Of Illicit Products Using Database Development And Chemometrics.

Worldwide, counterfeit, illicit, and untaxed alcoholic spirits are responsible for problems with economy, labour, and public health including over 23,400 jobs lost in the EU and over €1.2B in lost taxes. Estimations of counterfeit spirits (CFS) range from 25% to 40% of total alcoholic spirits consumed globally. In addition, CFS causes consumer confidence brand deterioration, hurting the global marketplace.
Current methods of CFS detection are expensive both to purchase and to operate, physically large, and often require highly trained and expensive operators. We have and continue to develop spirits spectroscopic fingerprinting techniques that have very low false positives, are simple and inexpensive to operate and that provide rapid screening using statistical evaluation of spirits authenticity.