Something fishy with H Jayer bottles in the UK...

A seller on the UK-based Bidforwine site is selling a pair of Henri Jayer Nuits St Georges 1995 at a starting price of £4000:

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So far, so good.

However, a few days ago the same seller sold these two bottles of Henry Jayer Nuits St Georges 1995 for £2200:

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The only problem is… the bottle numbers are the same (00009 and 00012).


You’d be forgiven to think that this was a forger using the same plates/images to print a series of fakes. However, the neck label on 00009 has the same minor tear on both sets of bottles, so are these actually the same two bottles? If so, why is the seller re-selling a pair that they previously sold only a few days ago, and at twice the starting price? Did the bidder reneague on the purchase (if so, how could it be listed so soon after the initial sale - they were listed just over five days apart - surely you’d wait more than a few hours for payment before re-listing)? Or did the original seller buy their own wine, pay the premium, and then list the bottles again at a higher price (perhaps they were trying to drive the price up and bought it by mistake). This is far too small-scale to suspect money-laundering… Any thoughts?

Perhaps they never reached the reserve, and are now relisted?

As far as I can see on social media, the market is flooded with jayer fakes. Would never even think of buying bottles like these.

That’s what I originally thought as well, but the site says that they were sold at £2200 (when they’re not sold it says "
This listing is closed. This lot was not sold because the bids did not meet the seller’s reserve.")

Follow some Korean wine collectors on Instagram. You’ll see so many fake Jayer it’ll make your head spin

Indeed, there are a lot more fakes out there than genuine bottles. Though in this case it’s more that (due to the tear on the neck label) the seller appears to be selling the exact same two bottles more than once… (they might of course be fake but that’s another matter)

My advice would be to avoid fake Jayer at those prices. Incredibly knowledgeable collectors on this website declared fake Romanee Conti to be the greatest wine on earth. So I’d focus on those.

Is it just me or are the bottles actually different heights? The torn-capsule bottle looks taller in both photos.

That’s called bottle variation.

[cheers.gif]

Agreed.

But I’m not sure it’s the same pair of bottles. The vintage strip label is much higher on the neck on the righthand bottle in the first photo, the bottom of the capsule seems to be about 1/4" (.6cm) higher, and the main label is either mounted higher or is taller than the label on the bottle on the left. None of those discrepancies seem exactly the same with the lefthand bottle in the bottom picture. So maybe they aren’t the same bottles; just a second set with the same serial numbers.

That made me laugh [cheers.gif]

The photo perspective doesn’t help, but they certainly seem to be slightly different heights. If you study the staining and the neck label tear, the no 12 bottle is almost certainly the same. The position of the crease and nick in the foil capsule is consistent too, to the point where I think it’d be impractical to replicate (and for what reason?). The 9 has identical stain patterns on the main label too. They look like the same set of bottles to me.

All in though, this just seems like an episode of someone relisting bottles after a buyer backed out. The most damning thing is the apparently different height.

Even so, a certain Richard Brierley (see https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nyscef/ViewDocument?docIndex=fgCoCQrztwq0Mlp71sy9ZQ==) is at the very least working for Bid For Wine now, so it’s a place I would avoid at all costs.

I didn’t know that, thanks for the heads up!

I wasn’t actually thinking of buying these bottles but drop by the site now and then to see what they have on. What surprised me about this is that I saw the second Jayer lot literally hours after I saw the first one. It must have been re-listed almost immediately after the first lot was sold. There were two bids on the lot, so if one buyer dropped off the face of the earth immediately, why not offer it to the underbidder?

To follow up on this, it now appears the same thing has happened to a magnum of Vosne Romanee 1992 (bottle nr 54) as well.

Again the bottle seems to be the exact same - the vintage label is missing on both… The magnum only had one bid on it. Surely no one would bid on £4200 worth of wine in order to make it seem legitimate, just to pay the commission on these, then re-list them at twice the price when they failed to sell in the first place???

Impossible to say if they are fakes or genuine.
However it´s easily possible that the seller bought his own bottles (with a different buyer name) to drive the price up … and relisted them a few days later.
Reg. the different heights: it is possible that Jayer used old cleaned bottles for bottling, and these were of slightly different dimensions. I´ve seen that more than once in original cases (of other producers).
Generally I would never buy bottles like these without detailed provenience … in these days it´s far to dangerous. There IS a reason why the recent Jayer-sale from the original cellar reached such incredible heights - at least the provenience seemed 100% genuine (imho).