Fine Wine and Spirits
Provenance that stays with the bottle.
Fine wine and rare spirits trade at auction, through merchants and in storage, often many times without leaving the cellar. Provenance rests on invoices, cellar records and labels that can be copied.
NOANE is designed to bind each bottle or cask to an ownership record that a buyer, merchant or auction house can check.
Direct Answer
What NOANE does for fine wine and spirits.
NOANE is a patented custody protocol designed to bind a bottle or cask to an ownership record. A transfer of that record is designed to need both the bottle and its current owner, so a buyer, merchant or auction house can check that the bottle is the one on record and that the seller has the authority to sell it.
The Exposure
A label can be copied. A bottle can be refilled.
Rare bottles are valued on what they claim to be and where they have been. Each new owner relies on paperwork that can be separated from the bottle.
Counterfeit bottles
In August 2014 a US federal court sentenced wine dealer Rudy Kurniawan to 10 years in prison. He blended cheaper wines, bottled them as rare vintages under counterfeit labels, and sold them at auction and directly.
Storage and resale
Cases held in storage can change owners many times without moving. Each buyer relies on a statement they cannot check against the bottle.
Lost value
Producers earn nothing from resales of their own bottles and have no record of who holds them.
A label says what a bottle should be. Custody shows where it has been.
Documented vs Owned
Documented once. Owned many times.
Provenance records say where a bottle came from. Ownership is a different question: who holds the authority to sell this bottle today.
Provenance today
Ownership, as NOANE is designed
NOANE layers on top of expert authentication and provenance records. It does not replace them.
Designed for Every Side of the Trade
Who it is for.
Capabilities the protocol is designed to enable. Not all are built today.
Producers and estates
Identity at bottling. A view of your bottles after the first sale. An optional fee on verified resales through participating channels.
Merchants and auction houses
Only the record's owner can consign. The buyer verifies on delivery.
Storage and warehouses
Ownership changes recorded while the bottle stays on the shelf. Release and delivery as signed events.
Collectors
Verify with a phone tap. An ownership record you hold.
Insurers and lenders
Cover and collateral tied to specific bottles and their history.
Authenticators
Attach your assessment to an ownership record that travels with the bottle.
On the Record
A bottle's life on the record.
How the protocol is designed to follow a bottle from the estate to the glass.
01
Register
The bottle or cask receives its identity at bottling.
02
Bind
That identity is bound to an ownership record.
03
Store
The bottle can stay in storage while its ownership trades.
04
Sell
The sale settles digitally first.
05
Deliver
The buyer verifies the bottle and the record finalizes. An optional resale fee settles.
06
Resell
History travels with the bottle to every later owner.
07
Open
When the bottle is opened, its owner retires the record.
Fine wine and spirits use deferred custody mode, which is designed so the sale settles digitally at once and the record finalizes when the buyer verifies the bottle at delivery.
Limits
What NOANE does not do.
A chip signature is not proof that a wine is what its label says, that it was stored well, or that someone holds legal title. It is designed to prove the bottle is present and that the record's owner authorized the transfer. Experts, producers and the law still do their jobs.
There is no wine or spirits deployment today. This page describes the protocol design and the scope we are developing toward.
FAQ
Frequently asked.
Does NOANE replace authentication?
No. An expert or the producer can confirm a bottle is genuine. NOANE is designed to record who owns it and to gate each transfer. The two layer together.
Does it work with bottles in storage?
It is designed to. Ownership can change while the bottle stays in storage, and release to the owner can be recorded as one signed event.
How would a chip attach to a bottle?
It depends on the bottle and its closure: a capsule, a label or a tag. That design work is part of a pilot.
How would an optional resale fee work?
A producer can set a fee on verified transfers through participating channels. It is designed to settle when the buyer's verification finalizes ownership, and it applies only where a participating channel is used.
More answers on the FAQ and in the Glossary.
Sources: US Attorney's Office, Southern District of New York, 7 August 2014 (opens in new tab).
BIND IT.
Bring your category into the design cohort.
Research: NOANE Infrastructure Response Paper V2 · SSRN (opens in new tab) · DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.6736141 (opens in new tab)