Amadio Wines seeing red over similar labels in China

Daniel Amadio, of Amadio wines, with his labelled bottles at the left and the Selena Estate labelled bottles on the right.Picture: Tait Schmaal
Source: The Advertiser

A WINEMAKER has won a court injunction to stop a rival from using similar wine labels to his own brand.

Adelaide Hills winemaker Danniel Amadio, of Amadio Wines, said Riverland winery Salena Estate had been undercutting his profits by selling the similarly labelled wine for half the price on the international export market.

Mr Amadio said he was amazed when first shown the wine by one of his selling agents in China.

"I have heard of it happening to others and I was not that surprised when I first found out, but when I realised it was being done by another South Australian company I was shocked," he said.

"I was just glad it was the cheaper wines and not the premium wines. People need to be very careful and check that the labelling does not belong to other people."

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Salena Estate has agreed to an out-of-court settlement over the incident, which affected Amadio's Fetch, Farmgate 8 and Margaret varieties.

Salena Estate principal Bob Franchitto said he had no idea the labels were so similar when he first started selling the export wine.

"I was approached by a Chinese company to produce these labels," he said.

"We are changing suppliers so we printed the labels in good faith and the next thing I know, Amadio said I was copying his labels, which I was not aware of."

Mr Amadio said the State Government needed more stringent labelling laws to protect the reputation of SA's famous wines.

"The governing body (Australian Wine and Brandy Corporation) needs to talk to the SA and federal governments to implement a system to scan labels or design a way to safeguard copyright," he said.

The labelling duties of the AWBC do not extend to possible copyright breaches. It checks producers' claims of the wine region, vintage and variety on the labels.

"The producer has to find out if their label is being used by someone else," Mr Amadio said. "There should be a requirement that if anyone further submits these labels, to advise the owner of the trademark. This could destroy companies and Australian brands just like that."

Mr Amadio and his Chinese agents have since bought all the wine labelled by Salena Estate and intend to destroy it.