Wow- that strikes me a really strange.
Why would someone go to the trouble of faking an '83 when an '82 (with the exception of Margaux and Palmer) is so much more valuable?
If you’re going to spend the time having a fake cork/capsule/label made, why not go for the more valuable vintage?
Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
I wonder if maybe it was just stored really well/cold?
I do not think we[members of this forum] really want to answer this question.
It seems that it didn’t matter much what Rudy put in the bottle, as long as it was the right color. It was the label that mattered most to his customers…and to the purportedly “professional” tasters and experts who lauded his blends and their creator. That’s as much as anything the real sad part about the whole saga. Label drinking at its best.
Well, if you DRANK the '83 and could get more than half of your money back by filling it with something else, why not? Or, if you keep the empties in your restaurant to do this, you’re making profit on both ends…
It is definitely starting to get a little tiresome and predictable how every time a big fraud story breaks, there always turns out to have been some famous critic right in the middle of it, arm outstretched and glass in hand to take advantage of whatever hyper-expensive trophy someone is willing to comp him. It is sad because some of these guys didn’t need stuff like this to get where they are today. Neal Martin’s Pomerol book is phenomenally impressive and unlike most tasting-note careerists, he can write. But it seems there is so much pressure for these people to establish themselves as some kind of priestly caste, which involves building a big base of experience with wines that most people can never even hope to see, that the temptation arises to take every opportunity to mooch trophy juice that they can get. Honestly, I don’t really see that changing until the attitude of the people who read and subscribe to them changes, and we finally manage to get it in our collective heads that spitting out a bunch of 1 oz pours in one mega-tasting after another doesn’t lead to any sort of wine knowledge worth having. (Just look at Parker as Exhibit A, who appears to have sipped and spit virtually every trophy wine made in the last century, and probably several million other wines too, and still hasn’t managed to say anything more insightful than a point score about a single one of them.) Maybe CellarTracker will turn into the next dominant model, which would be a huge improvement, but I would settle for just about any model where writers cover wines they have actually purchased and cellared themselves–you know, with their own money, and maybe even drank rather than spat–and if that leaves them with nothing to write about then maybe they shouldn’t have been telling the rest of us to what to think in the first place.
And, Keith…there were those (as in the Rudy mess) that had their arms “outstretched” for more than a glass of wine, but something green…and weren’t just looking for “comps” to write about. Hard to ascribe any cred to such a methodology’s results.
Transparency of terroir? silly term, IMO. But, transparency for “critics” isn’t silly.
Any known instances where Tanzer or Galloni were fooled??
I think you just answered your own question.
Exactly. I expect some people are filling bottles they have based on the presentability of the capsules and corks. If the capsule comes off cleanly and you can get the cork out in one piece without much damage, refill with a $30 wine and it goes back on the market. There are so many resellers, it must be easy enough to find a place to recycle.
I once bought a lot of 1991 Chave at Butterfields. I believe six bottles were legit, but the seventh bottle was missing a capsule. When we drank it, several people thought it seemed too light and aged to be a 1991 (which I have seen beat 88, 89 and 90 in a blind tasting). It did seem like Chave, though. I’m still not sure about that one but I suspect someone had the extra bottle and decided to get a little more out of their sale by pouring a 92 or 87 into it. If it was rejected by the auction house, they’d just drink it. This was before the 91 was really expensive, too.
I’ve had some really good bottles of it.
Off course the labels said Duckhorn so maybe someone had refilled it with Petrus.
Wilfred, I think the influence of professional critics has waned, but I would reverse the cause and effect.
I don’t think it is due to these episodes of deception. I would speculate that most people who subscribe to and buy based on the advice of WA, WS, IWC, Decanter, Burghound, Jancis et al are largely unaware of, or are perhaps just vaguely aware of the wine fraud issue. And most have probably not heard of the experts being taken in by the fraudsters. Most either don’t play in that league or aren’t as concerned/fascinated/obsessed with the topic as those reading this thread, or both.
But I agree that the CellarTracker model is in ascendence. Reviews there are much easier to access and crowd-sourcing of opinion is simply more accepted these days. I believe that the popularity of CellarTracker is eroding the critics’ influence, not the other way around. IMO this would be happening even in the absence of the forgeries. The forgery stories have been out there for years. They make a splash and most people’s attention quickly turns elsewhere since they’re just not in the market for those rarities. And no one is making headlines with stories about $100-300 bottles being faked.
But CellarTracker is always just a click away when you need it, even when the critics aren’t. And most wine enthusiasts need it frequently.
Can one carbon date a liquid?
Even still, you could just replace with an equally old, yet less expensive wine.
I am apt to give all of these critics a pass. Yes, Martin was fooled on a Pomerol. However, I doubt he drinks '70 Petrus often enough to be able to peg a fake. Remember, critics judge what is inside the bottle. Their job isn’t to identify what’s in the bottle. I can’t blame someone for assuming that the wine matches the label and vice versa. However, today after all of this went down, it would be folly for critics to not add “do I believe this tastes like I imagined it would taste like” when they’re at one of these mega tastings. No different than investors have added “are these returns too good to be true?” after Madoff. Frauds work because they aren’t expected. Live and learn.
Everyone on this board has been served a steak of lesser quality than advertised on the menu, have been served a Pepsi instead of a Coke and other swaps and never knew the difference.
I don’t think so, but you can check for radioactive elements. Wines made after 1945 have some traces of it. That’s one of the ways the Rodenstock wines were shown to be fakes.
Well, one would hope the author of an important book on Pomerol would know what was a Petrus and what was a fake based on tasting a lot of vintages. Some of the Rudy fake Burgundies had people muttering things at tastings. Still, it’s clear that the good fakers are very good.
I wish critics could only taste blind…seriously, Neal Martins greatest Petrus was quite possibly Duckhorn!..exposes the entire facade of the ‘Expert’ wine critic…just look at wine scores…you can almost write the scores b4 u see them…so predictable at times, i see it with bordeaux eg. Flagship 1st growth wine goes 95 points…2nd label 93…3rd label 90…a few times I liked the second label better than the first…and it’s always written off…in fact one of the greatest bordeaux I have ever tasted was a second label…I know! I know! It was too young…honestly, I am not always sure this is the case…at times just an excuse…Ok, well interestingly one of my favorite bordeaux ever tasted was a 4th growth from '82…I was pretty psyched to see the decanter panel award big scores to wines like croizet bages and haut batailley over the mighty higher ranked classified growths…I found it quite refreshing
ok you can flame me now
One can hope, but I’m not sure it’s realistic to expect it. Harry Waugh’s reply to whether he’d ever mistaken a Bordeaux for a Burgundy (“Not since lunch”) may have been a bit of self-deprecating humor, but there is more than a kernel of truth in it. It’s not easy to differentiate between the real deal and a good fake, especially if the wine is old enough to be subject to substantial bottle variation.
Critics need to be more cognizant of their limitations when it comes to the ability to tell real wines from fakes. If they wish to avoid future embarrassment and loss of credibility they need to acknowledge it in print with a disclaimer when they taste old rarities.
Exactly. I’d have to imagine that if you lined a dozen 1970 Petrus in a row, you’d have 8-9 different taste profiles at this age. Hindsight is 20/20. Rudy got caught b/c there was physical evidence that made people suspicious. If he weren’t taxed w/ having to come up w/ matching bottles/corks/capsules to sell his wine, but was only responsible for pouring wine behind a curtain, he would still be doing it.
Critics need to be more cognizant of their limitations when it comes to the ability to tell real wines from fakes. If they wish to avoid future embarrassment and loss of credibility they need to acknowledge it in print with a disclaimer when they taste old rarities.
That may be a stretch…I don’t think you’d be invited to tastings very often if the host knows you’re going to print, “I can’t be held responsible for scores if this guy pours me a bunch of fakes at his party.” I think readers/consumers need to be aware that it is the critic’s job to score whatever is in the bottle and they are not in the business of identifying wines. Nobody is, that I’m aware of.
You could except except that you are not going to be able to come up with an exact year, but you get a range of years. And it is less accurate so close to the present day. So, it is basically not worthwhile.
I would imagine that you could use other techniques (perhaps gas chromatography?) to come up with a chemical fingerprint. But it’s not be overly cheap, plus you’d have to have a 100% geniune bottle to compare to. And of course, I have no clue in the world how much a wine would differ in different vintages anyway.
Technically, you can carbon-date wine but it would be of limited value since it is a ballpark value for much older things than (drinkable) wine. Like 50-60 millennia old (or older).
Good point, Clint, and most people aren’t comfortable with questioning the provenance of a generous host’s wines. But maybe that is what should happen, and if it means there are less reports on these rarities, maybe that would be a good thing as well.
For DRC, you want to put in Domaine Serene Evenstad, but cut it with a bit of something cheap so it doesn’t taste too good to be DRC.
When serving a fake bottle to David Zylberberg, always use Texier, just in case he likes it.