© Domaine Ponsot/Altaya Wines/eProvenance

L-R: Domaine Ponsot wines; Laurent Ponsot; the eProvenance sensor

New sensor means fine-wine customers will be able to see if their wines were transported and stored correctly.

Direct from the cellar lots are selling for a premium at auction, as fine-wine collectors seek wines with perfect provenance. In an effort to reassure customers of the provenance of its wine, a leading Burgundy producer is adopting a new in-case technology to provide information at the touch of a button.

Domaine Ponsot is the first high-profile producer to adopt eProvenance's second-generation technology, which provides a detailed history of the life of a case of wine.

The sensor monitors the temperature and humidity of fine wines as they travel from the wine producer to the customer, and the information can be read on smartphones and tablets.

Laurent Ponsot, head of Domaine Ponsot, explained: “We’re already monitoring our shipments with eProvenance services to assure our wine reaches our consumers in excellent condition, and are now moving forward with very exciting technology to put the provenance story directly in the hands of our consumers on their NFC smartphones.”

“This technology will also increase traceabilty to help us eliminate the gray market issues,” he added.

Laurent Ponsot has been one of the most active wine producers in the fight against counterfeiting. In 2008, he traveled to New York to prevent the sale of a Rudy Kurniawan consignment of 84 bottles of wine labeled as 1929 Domaine Ponsot, which could not be authentic as the estate was not founded until 1934. Ponsot has since worked closely with the FBI on the Kurniawan case, which will go to trial in September.

Domaine Ponsot will install eProvenance 2G sensors in every case, or 50,000 bottles, of its grand-cru-level wines. A leading Bordeaux château also plans to embrace the technology from late 2013 onwards.

The adoption of the eProvenance system has been a long time coming. In late 2011, Eric Vogt, the company's founder and CEO, admitted that some of the most famous names in Bordeaux had expressed concerns over the sensors. The producers felt that the system might provide consumers with too much information, potentially devaluing cases if they had experienced a heat spike en route to their destination.

However, Vogt claims that a case with a perfect track record could attract a premium of 10–20 percent.