Today we are very proud to announce the launch of L-WIN – The Universal Wine Identifier. L-WIN is a unique seven-digit numerical code, designed to improve the simplicity, speed and accuracy of data and information exchange.
All wine trade participants have different naming conventions for their products, depending on which parts of the wine label they feel are the most important. L-WIN allows wine companies to keep their preferred naming system, while introducing a new universal code.
Among many other uses, L-WIN enables:
- Warehouses to improve the accuracy of their databases and quickly identify incoming and outgoing stock.
- Traders to avoid identification errors when buying or selling wine.
- Logistics and IT professionals to produce value-added queries for databases and stock management systems.
- All wine trade participants to speak a common language when sharing or transmitting data.
Each L-WIN refers to the wine itself (i.e. the producer and brand, grape or vineyard). Additional information, such as the vintage, bottle size or pack size can be easily added as separate fields. (Liv-ex can supply a recommended format for this.)
The first six numbers of the code represent each wine’s unique identifier, while the seventh number is a “check digit” that minimises input errors.
The L-WIN database of wine names is managed by Liv-ex and you can access the full L-WIN database via a dedicated page on liv-ex.com. The database can be downloaded in Excel format and you can request an L-WIN for those wines not yet included.
Use of L-WIN is made available under a free licence from Liv-ex. A “matching” service for large-scale databases is also available.
