6 minute read
Gary’s Corner
Photo by Ian McCausland Faking It
By Gary Hewitt, DipWSET, CWE, FWS, Sommelier
Billionaire Bill Koch thought he owned a bottle of 1782 Château Lafitte previously owned by Thomas Jefferson. It was engraved with “Th. J”—a sure sign of authenticity. But caveat emptor, the engraving was done with an electric engraver, an impossibility at the time. Another 20 bottles of famous and rare wines in Bill Koch’s impressive cellar were subsequently exposed as fakes—the cost at auction of these 21 bottles was $3.4 million!
An infuriated Koch vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice. His initial target was Hardy Rodenstock, the now infamous international wine collector and trader who first offered the Jefferson bottles at auction. But Rodenstock was just the beginning; litigious Koch (who previously sued both of his brothers and his mother) racked up lawsuits against auction houses, retailers, vendors, and collectors. One of these collectors is now the most infamous wine counterfeiter of our time, Rudy Kurniawan.
Rudy Kurniawan was a wine collector and investor with a reputation for spending millions at auctions. He was wellloved by those in California’s elite wine circuit, known for being kind and very generous with what was rumoured to be the largest private wine collection in the world. However, his background was shrouded in mystery—he demurred whenever someone asked where his money came from. In the early 2000s, Rudy began offering wines at auction, including magnums of 1982 Château Le Pin and bottles of Domaine Ponsot Clos St. Denis Grand Cru. It was Rudy’s early vintages of Ponsot Clos St. Denis (those between 1945 and 1975) that caught the winemaker’s eye in an auctioneer’s catalogue. You see, Laurence Ponsot’s family only started making the Clos St. Denis in 1982. Under the scrutiny of Koch, Ponsot, and, eventually, the FBI, Rudy’s nefarious wine scheme unravelled.
When the FBI raided his home, they found a workshop stocked with labels, corks, tools for counterfeiting, and authentic empty bottles to be refilled. There were stocks of inexpensive Napa Valley wines with notes on how to pass them off as older vintages of Bordeaux. He purchased old Burgundian wines from the cellar of a long-standing négociant that he could “adjust” and rebottle as more famous, more expensive selections. Rudy’s excellent palate plus his attention to detail created convincing counterfeits that under other circumstances may have garnered real respect. Between 2000 and 2012, the “Great Gatsby” of wine collectors bought and sold so much wine that it is estimated that as many as 10,000 of his counterfeit wines could still be in private collections. In 2012, he was convicted of fraud, sentenced to 10 years in prison, and ordered to pay $28.4 million in restitution!
But not all counterfeit wines imitate the super rare and expensive. In 2010, 1.3 million cases of Gallo’s Red Bicyclette Pinot Noir were sold in the United States. Gallo sourced the wine from Sieur d’Arques, a major producer in the LanguedocRoussillon of south France, a region with the capacity to produce a maximum of only 500,000 cases of Pinot Noir. Investigations revealed that liberal quantities of cheaper Merlot and Syrah made up the difference. After successful prosecution, the defeated lawyer for Sieur d’Arques seemed unperturbed: “Not a single American consumer complained.”
Estimates indicate that counterfeit alcohol costs the global drinks industry more than $3 billion per year. Although Scotch whisky and cognac account for about two thirds of the fraud, the impact on wine is still significant. China, followed by India and Turkey, is the largest producer of counterfeit goods, and the scale of fake wine in China is of legendary proportions— one estimate is that 60%–70% of all 1998 Bordeaux sold in China was fake in one way or another. In 2021, in the south China city of Guangzhou alone, a police operation uncovered a criminal network that had been selling counterfeit Penfolds wines for three years while pocketing $26 million.
Of course, producers are taking countermeasures. Patented embossed bottles and special corks make a counterfeiter’s job more challenging. Veuve Clicquot patented their special not-yellow-not-orange label as Pantone 137C, and Italy has introduced labels and seals with holograms, watermarks, and unique registration numbers à la printed currency. Globally, producers are using “smart labels” that incorporate radio-frequency identification (RFID) and QR codes or even microchips embedded into their bottles. As such, the age-old cat-and-mouse game between producers and counterfeiters continues to evolve.
As for Bill Koch, well, he has apparently lost his enthusiasm for collecting rare wines.
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