counterfeit wines have been going on for generations folks.
in wines, there are several ways of collecting. I was a wine
collector for years and still have 1982, 1985 & 1990 bordeaux in my
collections from such heavyweights as Pichon-Lalande, Lynch Bages and
I even have a bottll of 1945 Port. I am a "bottle collector". I buy
wines to drink them, and sometimes I save the empty bottle.
another category of collector is a "label collector"
Label collectors are the kind of people who have to have a bottle
from every producer of each variant bottle and frequently these wines
are not drunk. People who have 1812 Napoleans are unlikely to drink
them, largely because they are now undrinkable (but it isn't always the case)
usually - and this case likely highlights this fact - win
counterfeiting is done by changing labels and even re-corking bottles.
The thief in this article was obviously a sophisticated, but
unsophisticated schmuck!! For instance, he had to have changed the
labels on every bottle he wished to sell, which means he had to
counterfeit these labels. We already know how easy it is to
counterfeit paper. His problem was counterfeiting wines that did not
exist, but the simple fact that representatives of the wineries had
to go through historical information to help uncover the fraud is one
aspect of why it may have been so difficult to expose him, combined
with the egalitarian way that wine business is handled.
Now while some real pro buyers may have avoided his scam by not
bidding on bottles that they "didn't feel were right", the majority
of these bottles may have been bought by Asian collectors who drink
the wines. When this happens, they may not know what the wines are
supposed to taste like & in all likelihood, the wines in the bottles
were probably good wines re-bottled, so unless the wine aficionado
knew that the 1945 wine they were drinking was supposed to have a
peachy flavor, and not instead the oaky apple flavor that it does
have - the fraud would not be exposed.
If wine review king Robert Parker bought a bottle and opened it, the
fraud may have been exposed immediately.
the key here is knowledge and a sensitive pallate.
Few people can say things like "ah yes.. grapes grown on the north
slope in the second area from the third patch of the western vineyard
at Sonoma-Coutrez" (but yes there actually are some people who can).
The thief must have been doing this for some time. probably many
years, but the evidence is mostly gone as it has been drank. But how
any experienced dealer could forge bottles that were never vinted in
the first place is a mind-boggling fraud. Having a suite of wines
1945-1971 that don't exist is like creating a style-Q Dracula one
sheet. The fact that the winery needed to be called to do historical
research if those bottles existed however is evidence of how
difficult it may be for average collectors to know they hadn't been
cheated. Even the auctioneers were taken in, which sort of means
their professional wine agents might need some more schooling
cheers!!
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