Stores taunt rival with 'real wine' adverts
Wellcome and ParknShop rubbed salt in the wounds of rival AdMart yesterday, taking out adverts boasting that all their liquor was 'the real thing'.
Capitalising on a public relations disaster for shop-from-home service AdMart, which sold fake Bordeaux wine and is suspected of selling fake Hennessy XO cognac, the market leaders bought full-page ads in several papers.
The adverts, which cost more than $100,000 each, promise that all the wine on Wellcome and ParknShop shelves is authentic.
Wellcome yesterday knocked $40 of the price of the label at the centre of the controversy, Mouton Cadet, making it $78 a bottle.
ParknShop also dropped its price to $78 and said it had a team of top wine experts to taste its stock and ensure all its wine was authentic.
Both stores have offered to replace any suspect bottles bought from other shops with wine they guarantee is authentic Mouton Cadet. Neither could say how many swaps had been made.
AdMart, for its part, published an apology for the Mouton Cadet mistake.
'We have sold you fakes. Although the act was carried out unwittingly - we bought the wine from a reputable agent - that does not mean our ignorance and negligence may thus be forgotten and forgiven,' an advert in yesterday's Post said. 'We want to give you your money back, 100 per cent. We are very sorry.' There was no mention of the suspected fake cognac, which is still being tested in France but which early results indicate is not authentic Hennessy.
