"Operation Swill" and the "True Spirit Authenticator"

[Peter Apps]

The moral of the story? If you don't know how to tell if you're drinking good booze versus cheap booze, be a friend to your wallet and drink the swill (and if you're drinking it mixed with soda or fruit juices or other booze, then only buy the cheap stuff). .

[CE Instruments]

The fraud occurs only if the bar tender sells the Rutgot as Vanczy even though by chemical analysis they are the same thing. Part of the "value" is in the brand and the placebo benefit you get from it.
Should the general public find out Rutgot and Vanczy are the same product but at different prices then sales of Vanczy are likely to drop. It was the case when I think Coke Cola tried bottling Thames water and selling it as a premium product

[Peter Apps]

The fraud occurs only if the bar tender sells the Rutgot as Vanczy even though by chemical analysis they are the same thing. Part of the "value" is in the brand and the placebo benefit you get from it.But if the peole who order Vanczy think that it is Vanczy, they get the brand value and the placebo effect - so they get what they are paying for
Should the general public find out Rutgot and Vanczy are the same product but at different prices then sales of Vanczy are likely to drop. It was the case when I think Coke Cola tried bottling Thames water and selling it as a premium product

Bottled water is probably the biggest branding scam in the history of marketing.

Peter

[Don_Hilton]

How do we figure out if the bartender has been selling us Rotgut rather than Vancy? Audit the books! Just another form of analysis.

[Peter Apps]

OK, so here's one to think about over the weekend and a couple of shots of your favourite ;

scenario as above, but the huge demand for Vanczy (due to slick marketing, image and favourable placebo effects) means that the producer of the original potato alcohol cannot keep up. The company that bottles Vanczy buys up all the stocks that it can get of Rutgot and decants it into Vanczy bottles.

Peter

[gcguy]

Whilst I agree that there is a fine line between substitution and fraud...

If the distillation is done using different stills then the balance between the other alcohols and higher boiling compounds will vary. This is will cause a variation in the taste of each. If you consider the Scottish whisky industry, distilleries a few miles apart can produce hugely different tasting products. Yes a lot comes down to the way whisky is matured and a lot of flavour comes from the barrel but the purity of the ethanol at the start will have an impact.

However if the drink is mixed with something else or used in a cocktail then the taste difference would be lost and quite frankly anyone who dilute premium spirits with mixers deserves to be ripped off!


GCguy

[DR]

Hmmmm - - - sounds lots like the FD&C act terms could be brought into play, provided we could handily prove that rotgut is routinely found in Vanczy containers. If not adulteration (IPA & caramel sauce), there are certainly misbranding and errant label concerns (Smirnoff puured from Grey Goose bottles), and who would dispute that alcohol is a drug?
All that may be missing are a FDA indication for prescribing it and a willing lawyer. I suspect that the terminology in the FD&C act would make it all easier to prosecute.

[Peter Apps]

Hmmmm - - - sounds lots like the FD&C act terms could be brought into play, provided we could handily prove that rotgut is routinely found in Vanczy containers in the current scenario Vanczy is found in Rutgot containers also - since they differ only in their branding - their contents are identical since they come form the same source. If not adulteration (IPA & caramel sauce), there are certainly misbranding and errant label concerns (Smirnoff puured from Grey Goose bottles), and who would dispute that alcohol is a drug?
All that may be missing are a FDA indication for prescribing it and a willing lawyer. I suspect that the terminology in the FD&C act would make it all easier to prosecute.

[scottythree]

Reminds me of the Bausch and Lomb eye contacts scam back in the mid 90's! The link below describes the settlement that Bausch and Lomb agreed to after they sold the exact same disposable contact lenses under different names and different prices. Hope it was worth it!

http://www.alexanderinjury.com/library-products-7/

[jubilukian]

Just came across this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/27/busin ... d=all&_r=0

"...tens of thousands of liters of counterfeit spirits were distilled, pumped into genuine vodka bottles, with near-perfect counterfeit labels and duty stamps, and sold in corner shops across Britain. The fake Glen’s vodka looked real. But analysis revealed that it was spiked with bleach to lighten its color, and contained high levels of methanol, which in large doses can cause blindness."

[bisnettrj2]

It's things like this that help me understand why my sister is a vegetarian organic hippie that raises chickens in urban Chicago while also growing her own vegetables and participating in food co-ops in order to avoid anything processed.

[bisnettrj2]

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/20 ... iquor.html

An update - the ownership group of the TGI Fridays restaurants involved in Operation Swill is paying a $400,00 USD fine and a $100,000 fee for the investigative costs.

[lmh]

And a late reply to Peter's ethical conundrum.

Vanczy rebottling Rottgut: as a customer, you are buying Vanczy's name. The only people entitled to sell that name are Vanczy. Therefore they have a right to rebottle Rottgut and sell it as Vanczy (but a private bar-tender doesn't). Vanczy promised you vodka, the bottle contains vodka, your consumer rights aren't being harmed.

But Vanczy can't entirely escape the consequences of their action: their ability to sell Vanczy vodka comes from a belief it's different, and just as Coca-Cola suffered a big loss of consumer trust over their Thames water thing, so Vanczy are skating on thin ice if anyone finds out. No criminal or civil offence has been committed, but the public don't need a court to tell them how to feel, who to trust, and from whom to buy.

This leads to my Daily Mail test. Instead of asking "is my action legal?", I personally think people should ask "am I going to feel ashamed of myself when my action appears on the front page of the Daily Mail Newspaper?"

[Peter Apps]

This leads to my Daily Mail test. Instead of asking "is my action legal?", I personally think people should ask "am I going to feel ashamed of myself when my action appears on the front page of the Daily Mail Newspaper?"

An interesting take on it - but I fear that the huge numbers of people who do idiotic things just to get on TV, or post videos of themselves on Farcebook competing for a Darwin award suggest that your filter has a very large pore size.

Peter

[bisnettrj2]

http://www.chromatographytechniques.com ... 7&type=cta

"Damascus, a division of Capjem, has developed their own proprietary method of taking any low, medium or top shelf liquor and improving the quality exponentially by removing the impurities."

So, no more re-bottling top shelf with swill? Just run it through the old "Alcohol Alkalinizing Cleansing Technology followed by Enhanced Isothermal Molecular filtration"?

By the way, can someone cut through the crap on this and tell me what this company is actually trying to do?