(TDB) - The Conseil Interprofessionnel du Vin de Bordeaux (CIVB or Bordeaux Wine Council), the trade body representing more than 7,000 producers in Bordeaux, has won a landmark case in China against counterfeiters the wine council has exclusively revealed to dbHK.

The case, won in July, is the latest success in Bordeaux’s fight against wine counterfeiters in China, which has become its biggest and most profitable market for the French wine region.

The country is home to more than 40% of Bordeaux’s annual wine exports by volume.

The counterfeiters, according to Thomas Jullien, the Bordeaux Wine Council’s representative in China, are based in the country’s main wine producing region in Shandong peninsula’s Penglai, and have been producing fake wines bearing the labels of Bordeaux and Médoc, two Geographically Indicated (GI) wine regions that the trade body has obtained trademark rights within China.

The CIVB, however, did not reveal the extent of the fake wine operation and the value of counterfeited wines in this case but said the counterfeiter was sentenced to two years in jail.