Wine wine, fruit of the vine
Major wine fraud -- fun to read as although I can taste the difference, a decent bottle of $8 red is fine for my table. It's about people and food not some esoteric nuance. Got better things to do with my time, money and
nuance.
From
New York Magazine:
Ch�teau Sucker
Even at Rudy Kurniawan's coming-out party in September 2003, there were questionable bottles of wine.
A score of Southern California�s biggest grape nuts had gathered at the restaurant Melisse in Santa Monica that Friday for a $4,800-a-head vertical tasting of irresistible rarities provided by Kurniawan: P�trus in a dozen vintages, reaching as far back as 1921, in magnums.
Although P�trus is now among the most famous wines in the world, it gained its exalted status relatively recently; before World War II, it was virtually unheard of, and finding large-format bottles that had survived from the twenties bordered on miraculous. Paul Wasserman, the son of prominent Burgundy importer Becky Wasserman, is something like wine royalty, but before this event, the oldest P�trus he had tasted was from 1975.
Nonetheless, two bottles left him scratching his head. The 1947 lacked the unctuousness of right-bank Bordeaux from that legendary vintage, and the 1961 struck him as �very young.� He briefly entertained the idea of �possible fakes���61 P�trus in magnum has fetched up to $28,440 at auction�and jotted, in his notes on the �47, �If there�s one bottle I have serious doubts about tonight, this is it.�
But in the rare-wine world, doubts are endemic; murkiness is built into a product that is concealed by tinted glass and banded wooden cases and opaque provenance and the fog of history. At the same time, the whole apparatus of the rare-wine market is about converting doubt into mystique. Most wealthy collectors want to spend big and drink famous labels, not necessarily ask questions or hear the answers. Guests at tastings don�t want to bite the hand that quenches them. Auctioneers may not want to risk losing consignments by nitpicking ambiguous bottles. Winemakers don�t like to talk about counterfeiting, for fear of the taint. Also, one thing not high on the FBI�s list of investigative priorities: billionaires getting snowed by wine forgers. It�s clear to everyone on this rarefied circuit that wine fraud is rampant. It�s also clear not many insiders feel an urgency to do anything about it.
A long story but a fun detective story and a good read. Kurniawan did have a good palate and memory.
The reveal:
Which is why what happened on April 25, 2008, was unprecedented. Ten minutes into the Acker auction of Rob Rosania�s Champagne-focused cellar at Cru, a long-haired man entered the room and took a seat near the back. It was Laurent Ponsot, maker of a coveted Burgundy featured in 22 lots in the auction. Domaine Ponsot only started making its Clos St. Denis in the eighties, but the catalogue included Kurniawan-consigned vintages from 1959 and 1945. Barzelay had alerted Ponsot, and told Kapon he needed to pull the lots; Ponsot decided to attend the auction to make sure they were withdrawn.
Emphasis mine -- oopsie... And then, there was this:
The FBI had been building its own case against Kurniawan, and had determined that he had been living in the country illegally since 2003, when his application for asylum had been denied. Now concerned that he was a flight risk, they filed for an arrest warrant. At dawn on March 8, a half-dozen FBI agents arrived at his house in Arcadia.
And Busted:
Kurniawan answered the door in his pajamas. The only other person in the house was his elderly mother. Hours later, when the FBI searched the house, they found thousands of wine labels for top wines, including 1950 P�trus and 1947 Lafleur, Lafite, and Roman�e-Conti. There were hundreds of old and new corks, and a mechanical device for inserting them. There were lead capsules and sealing wax and rubber stamps with vintages and ch�teaux names, such as 1899 and 1900 Latour and 1992 Screaming Eagle. There were glue and stencils and pattern scissors and warm white Ingres drawing paper. There were detailed instructions for fabricating labels for 1962 Domaine Ponsot Clos de la Roche. There were bottles of cheap Napa Valley wine markered with the names of old Bordeaux wines they were apparently intended to impersonate, and there were more bottles soaking in the kitchen sink, their labels ready to be removed.
Stick with the $8 daily plonk and you will be happy. Splurge for $15 for special events and maybe $30 for really special events. Anything more is a serious case of diminishing returns.
These house of cards scams -- as well as Ponzi scams -- are about as stupid as you can get.
#1) - There is no exit strategy -- there is no way to gracefully unwind the scam that you have created and built. Its only exit is down.
#2) - You will always get caught. There is no way to stay small and under the RADAR. #1) will see to that. Eventually, you will get to the point where someone will put two and two together and call your bluff...
Posted by DaveH at May 14, 2012 10:48 PM