Day Trip: San Diego (Extended)

Since the lab is still in pieces, it seemed like a good time to take a day trip to San Diego.  It was weird getting up in the morning and heading to the airport without any preparation and boarding a plane without any luggage.  I imagine it's how movie stars travel.  Without the Southwest part.

A small team of us left the Sacramento airport and an hour an a half later arrived in San Diego.  I like how close the plane gets to the city, feels like we might land on top of a building.

We went to San Diego to learn more about RFID Chips, since we will be putting them on every wine bottle.  These are examples of chips they can make.  We are putting them on every bottle and case and pallet for authenticity and traceability.  Wine fraud is an increasing problem, especially in China.  These chips will allow us to tie the bottles to a specific case and those cases to a specific pallet (56 cases).  We will encode them with information including the bottling date to be able to scan a specific bottle and trace it all the way back to the winery.

This machine makes RFID chips.  We requisitioned a specific shape that would be virtually undetectable under the label.  This is in addition to a QR code that is visible on the back label.  Did I mention that fraud is a growing problem?  For some very high end wines in some foreign countries, after the wine is poured at the table the bottle is required to be broken at the table in full view of everyone.  This was to prevent someone from fishing the bottle from the trash, filling it with unknown cheap wine, recorking it and selling it for an obscene amount of money.

It sounds a little silly to counterfeit wine, but I think it happens because it is so easy.  It is easy to fill a $500 bottle with $2 wine and sell it for $700 or more if people don't know what to look for.


This is what the chip making machine looks like on the inside.

Bet you're thinking about counterfeiting wine now.


These are examples of all the shapes they can make chips in.  Authenticity is a growing concern in many areas it seems.

These are for a wrist band for concerts or events.

This is the style that will go on the back label of our wine bottles.  The coils are aluminum and two circles stretched across the coils are the antenna.


The chips are made all at once, as are the wine labels so the two rolls have to be combined into a single roll, which will ultimately go on the bottling line and onto the individual bottles.

The Tortilla Machine makes it happen.  The Tortilla Machine only combines the two pieces.  The information we wish to encode on the chips is done in a separate step by a different machine.

Now each back label has it's own RFID chip and goes on to a second process to be encoded, which can be seen in the video.  Each label/chip combination is encoded with our desired information and then re-read to see if the information was transferred.  If it was not, and the chip fails, it gets marked and the machine goes on to the next one. 

The Tortilla Machine in action:

After a whole roll has gone through the encoder, it gets taken to the third step.  The third step of the process is manual.  If a chip fails and cannot be read by the computer, it has to be removed by hand and a working chip and label has to be placed in the missing spot, otherwise we will have problems when we label the bottles on the bottling line.  It is tedious work.

So if you were thinking about counterfeiting wine, think twice.  A lot of work is going towards prevention.

Ahh, the beautiful California coast line.  Our work at the factory is done, unfortunately we were only able to spend a few short hours in San Diego.

That's ok, drinks on the flight home were a nice end to a long day.  Fighting crime is hard work.

-L