UPDATE (September 6, 2016 at 9:00pm CST): This story has been changed to reflect that a Grey Goose bottle lacking a cork does not necessarily mean the bottle is not legitimate, as some brands are instead sold with a device to make refilling difficult.
It's no secret that the Chinese market is flooded with fake or smuggled booze. This bottle of Grey Goose was received by a bar in Shenzhen. Can you spot a difference between Grey Goose's official pictures and the bottle below?
Still don't see it? Take a closer look below.
To the left we have a metal capped bottle of Grey Goose, to the right we have a picture bottle from the Grey Goose website. The difference? One bottle has a foil cover, a serrated strip peel and a cork. Grey Goose's cork is the drink's "signature" and "seal of quality" per the Grey Goose website, but lacking a cork may actually be a sign of a different practice: parallel trading.
The bottle on the left is corkless. Look at where it was destined for.
Costa Rica was the intended destination of the bottle, according to a label on the back.
Wrong country. Does that mean it's filled with semi-poisonous, hangover-inducing fake vodka?
There is an easy way to find out. Drink some!
"I don't want to be associated with that," the proprietor said. Alas, the owner of the bar was keeping the stuff off the shelves and wasn't about to let some back-alley hack imbibe on his premises.
The only way to really know would to be to send it to a lab, which is time consuming and expensive. By the way, if you work in a lab, totally contact us.
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