30,000 bottles of allegedly fake wine seized in Taiwan

No word on whether they were stored on a treadmill:

Bruce

This sounds like an ordinary wine collectors NIGHTMARE. I don’t care about bespoke fraud at expensive auctions because I don’t buy there. But this kind of operation – a big foreign importer who can make good labels rebottling crap as fine Bordeaux and then selling it into the grey market – this would hit your ordinary collector who buys the low price on Winesearcher or who orders from Premier Cru and the like. Argh.

Some how I get the feeling that tis is just a tip of the iceberg, especially in that part of the world.

Another reason not to drink French wines.

What do you mean by treadmill?

Um…C. Fu? What do you have to say about this??

Culturally they just view violating copyright protection, selling knockoffs, and intellictual property theft as standard operation procedure.

This is no different.

Commerce corner

AUCTION FOR 30,000 BOTTLES OF FINE BORDEAUX

And how long do we have to bid before the price goes up?

This is just awful, it hurts so many people, although I was unaware that there is any problem ordering wine from Premier Cru (Berkeley CA. I assume). Other folks on this site informed me they just have a different business model and that allows them to sell for a lower price then everyone else.

The amount of large stocks of fraudulent wine through-out Asia is staggering. Which is why it is so attractive to order fine wine at a discount at Premier Cru - which is what I think you are suggesting,

You really have a hard time doing this internet thing, don’t you?

I’ll tell you this much, there’s been a lot of excitement over the stock so quantities are disappearing quickly and might not be around much longer

Oh yes I’ll get my bid in right away, before it’s too late. Wouldn’t want to lose out…

“Much of the evidence against Mr. Kurniawan came from a raid of his home outside of Los Angeles. Prosecutors said it was a winemaking factory, kept so cold that his mother, who lived with him, warmed her bedroom with a space heater. There were bottles on a treadmill, bottles soaking in the sink, bottles stacked against the wall. His computer contained files with scanned images of old wine labels.”

Bruce

I am reminded of a trip to China in 2012. I went into a shop at the airport to kill some time, and there were bottles of obviously fake Bordeaux being sold for outrageous prices. I was especially fond of the Pavie with the black and white label, as well as the Leoville Las Cases where Leoville was missing an l, so it was Leovile.

From the article (bold is my highlight)…

The company, which was founded in 1989, rebottled the wine in Taiwan using fake labels of top French châteaux. > It is believed that the company has sold around 440,000 bottles of the counterfeit wine since 2010.

I recently got back from trip with a 4-hour layover in Taipei airport. The terminal that I was at was like a huge complex of interconnected department stores with Duty Free stores by every departing gate. Whenever I walk by, I see that there’s plenty of Bordeaux being sold at the shelves. I’ve changed planes many times before in that airport and have only strayed once into a duty free store and decided never to do it again because I find that the salespeople are somewhat pushy and will not leave you alone even when you tell you’re just browsing and appear to obviously just killing time.

As far as the bottles are concerned, all the labels look so pristine and appear freshly-printed. I’m going back for an Asian trip in the next month or 2 and will plan on straying into one Duty Free store and examine the bottles, just for the heck of it, pushy salespeople and all.

Ramon, please take and post pix, that would be fun!

umm… there are more than 1 importer/distributer in taiwan, so even though 440,000 bottles seems like a large amount, i’m willing to go out on a limb to say that there are still plenty of legit wines in taiwan. from what i’ve read, the wines were relabled as french to be sold through channels such as convenient stores… essentially they were bottling $3/btl wines to be sold for $30… indeed a huge problem, but in my humble opinion more so for the general wine consuming public as opposed to collectors. always glad to see counterfeiters busted, but i’d reserve judgement until more facts are made public…

on the otherhand, what i really don’t understand is the champagne production vs number of bottles popped at nightclubs… it’s almost standard practice in asia, especially chinese influenced (china/hk/taiwan) regions to do a ridiculous amount of champagne at nightclubs… we’re talking like 12 bottles to start, and 100 bottle tabs are very normal… where does all of that come from!?

it seems clear Rudy was the tip of the iceberg