When concocting counterfeits purporting to be fine, old Burgundy, Kurniawan would mix a bit of undistinguished, old Burgundy with excellent versions of young, California pinot noir, creating a believable blend that showed both youthful fruit and Burgundian funk. The result, when successful, could be highly seductive.
Even celebrated experts can’t always identify a bogus bottle by taste. British wine authority Michael Broadbent, whose nose has hovered over more auction-grade wine than anyone, once declared a 1787 bottle of Bordeaux thought to have been owned by Thomas Jefferson “sensationally good.” A brace of bottles from the same cache, sold to billionaire industrialist Bill Koch, were revealed to be a hoax. (Koch was also one of Kurniawan’s victims.)
Free Wine Makes for a Good Smokescreen
As any interrogator knows, the most effective lies are spiked with some truth. Being seen at auctions, bidding on lots alongside the world’s whale collectors, widened Kurniawan’s smokescreen: Who would suspect a fellow collector of selling hoax wines? Especially because he mixed in legitimate bottles.
Kurniawan also gained traction by hosting wine dinners at which he treated fellow collectors to an endless array of special bottles. In the wee hours of a particularly Bacchic feast at the now shuttered New York wine destination Cru, Kurniawan’s posse allegedly ordered bacon-wrapped hot dogs to pair with their five-figure bottles.
Lubricating buyers at wine auctions helps, too. The house most closely associated with Kurniawan, Acker Merrall & Condit, plied bidders with liberal pours of collectible wine during its auctions, fostering a rollicking atmosphere compared with the more sedate sales run by old-line auction houses. If anyone doubted the authenticity of the bottles being sold, those concerns often evaporated after the second glass of Montrachet.
The Kurniawan affair was not the first wine counterfeiting case to make headlines, but it did mark the first time the U.S. Department of Justice pursued a wine counterfeiter. The details, outlined in In Vino Duplicitas, shine a revealing light on the growing scourge of wine fraud. Wineries are now experimenting with a variety of anti-counterfeiting techniques, including microprinted labels, high-tech etching on bottles, and embedded microchips that digitally authenticate the wine’s provenance. And experts have cropped up to help scrutinize ancient trophy bottles with the kind of detail normally reserved for celebrity autopsies.
Yet despite such efforts, high-end wine cellars continue to be compromised with questionable rarities. Given the inconsistencies inherent in rare wine, and the tendency for collectors to view their glass as half-full, the con threatens to thrive so long as the most coveted bottles continue to fetch sports car prices.
The $100,000 Bottle: Real or Fake?
We prepared to open the ’62 La Tâche.
The label looked authentic. But it was sealed with the type of wax covering that could indicate a Kurniawan counterfeit, its color pinkish rather than a deeper red. Once the wax was removed, however, the cork showed correct branding—Domaine Romanée Conti, La Tâche, and 1962—printed on the cork. It also revealed age-appropriate decay (after decades in the bottle, a cork will show some deterioration, especially at the top, where the cork isn’t in contact with the wine and has a tendency to dry out; sometimes counterfeiters will insert a relatively fresh-looking cork in an “old” wine).
As we poured the wine into glasses, its color revealed itself to be a faded brickish hue consistent with mature Burgundy. We swirled, sniffed, and sipped: Was this an immortal wine or the gustatory equivalent of Al Capone’s vault?