Want to Know Your Wine Is Genuine? EY Has Built a Blockchain for That

“Big Four” professional services firm EY has built a blockchain platform for a firm that will help consumers determine wines’ quality, provenance and authenticity.

The TATTOO Wine Platform has been developed for Blockchain Wine Pte. Ltd. using EY’s OpsChain solution, EY announced on Thursday.

The platform is backed by Asian wine cellar The House of Roosevelt, which will use it to sell wines directly from vineyards to hotels, restaurants, cafes and customers, according to the announcement.

EY said:

“Each bottle of wine will be ‘tattooed’ with its own unique QR code. By scanning the QR code, participants can access information such as vineyards’ names and locations, details such as the types of fertilizers used to grow the crops, and how each batch is transported for processing and delivery.”

The platform will focus on markets in Asia where the consumption of European wines is expanding, EY said. Over 5,000 labels will be added to the system, including wines from France, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, South America and California.

TATTOO has been built using the ethereum’s ERC-721 standard for non-fungible tokens, or crypto collectibles, according to the announcement. (Yes, basically, the wine tokens are like alcohol-based CryptoKitties.)

The asset traceability module of EY OpsChain has been used to tokenize over 11 million bottles of wine for various clients, as well as toher consumables. EY said.

As well as providing data on wine provenance, TATTOO also allows consumers and distributors to buy and sell wine, schedule and track shipments, monitor warehousing and delivery, and arrange for and track insurance coverage of wine shipments, EY said.

Taking a slightly different tack, blockchain startup VinX is also developing a supply chain platform for trading wine futures, which allow connoisseurs and collectors to purchase a vintage while it’s still in the barrel, a year or two before it’s bottled and released on the market.

Wine bottles image via Shutterstock