Don–Given the fact that the article you posted the other day has been removed from the website to which you linked, and given that there’s a substantial question about the political motivation/orientation of that website, I think it would be prudent to remove your post and its contents.
If someone steps forward later and makes these factual assertions in a more reliable setting (e.g., named sources in a more neutral news setting), then it might be worth coming back to.
Bruce
Like, if the same allegations are repeated on InfoWars? Better than the failing NYT
And who will play Clouseau hot on the trail of the missing wine? (Which is the real issue here at the moment IMHO; and the fact the insurance company saw fit to disburse their hard won denarii suggests its a bit more probable than ‘allegedly missing’).
If I had 1000 plus bottles go missing Id be calling the police!
The rest is indeed drama, and I have no interest in that.
Can you point me to a direct article or statement by Aubert (or anyone at DRC) saying the Tang wines were authentic?
I have only found a couple versions of this, wherein it is stated that the lot was withdrawn after Villaine also expressed concerns, and a “third” party apparently could not authenticate it:
“DRC co-owner and co-director Aubert de Villaine admitted to the Wine Spectator that he had concerns about the bottle: “The capsule is obviously not original,” he said.
“It is impossible for me to say if the bottle contains authentic La Tâche 1962 or not, but faced with doubts, I believe that we would not authenticate it,” he added.”
I think your quote Steve is concerning bottles from another auction and not those of Tang’s collection.
Thank you, I see you are correct, the article also mentions the Tang bottle a bit below. FWIW, Meanwhile I find articles regarding Tang defending the bottle, but so far nothing suggesting it as successfully authenticated. I will keep looking
(Edit). There is this in Wine Spectator:
“After the sale, Christie’s and Tang stood by all three lots, saying that DRC had vouched for authenticity.”
Although it is just a comment, not a presentation of material.
Unfortunately Aubert and I don’t really run in the same circles, so I can’t claim personal knowledge here. And I doubt he authenticates much of anything. However, he does seem to have frequent contact with Christie’s, and to express concerns about bottles on occassion, at which point he seems to believe that they are withdrawn from the auction.
Sorry if this was already posted:
One side claims $2 million in wine went missing. The other says, that didn’t happen.
https://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2018/04/missing-wine-case-heading-to-court?h=1
Curious. Given the apparent specificity of Lazar’s responses as to the fate of many of the wines, upon initial reading it’s hard not to feel somewhat skeptical of their claim. But then there’s the fact that the Buergers’ insurance company already paid them in full for the alleged missing wine. Knowing how loathe insurance companies are to hand out any money that they could weasel out of paying makes you wonder what the heck is really going on.
Gray did a nice job with the article, and apart from the assortment case of DRC, I struggled to find anything close to the average bottle price. I would love to see the complete list and how it was valued for insurance purposes.
Sounds to me like Lazar basically was saying, “dude, you can’t claim a bottle was missing when you posted a tasting note on it in CT…”
Buerger not the most upstanding citizen. My guess is that the only entity that gets screwed in this in the insurance company.
no such TN in CT (no TNs in CT for the wine in question), unless I looked-up the wrong wine.
It looks like the two parties here might deserve each other …
Except one may be too old (not young enough) for the other.
So Lazar claims to have identified what happened to 28 of the missing 1,377
Brian, CT has an activity log for all transactions and Lazar obviously has account access. He saw the purchase and consumption / sale activity. Switch to classic mode for a wine you’ve purchased and consumed, you’ll see “transactions” at the very bottom of the page.
Only 1,349 more bottles to go…
These guys deserve each other.
one awesome thing is that both these parties will be spending lots of money on lawyers squabbling with each other.
Which in turn will increase demand for fine wine, and hence prices 
When I was the North America Head of Market and Valuation Risk Management for the JPMorgan MBS/ABS/CMBS/CDO business in 2006 and 2007, Coventry First approached us to finance and perhaps securitize its large portfolio of unseasoned life-settlement policies. I screamed bloody murder, saying that there was no dog-dam, motto-farking way that I would approve taking on essentially a steaming pile of extension-prone, cashflow-parched “People PO CMO tranches”, underwritten with outdated mortality tables. Moreover, the pool displayed extremely adverse selection, because the very sophisticated, high-net-worth policyholders took out these life insurance policies not for death benefits to their heirs, but for immediate cash-value sale to aggressive life-settlement investors.
Yes, that Coventry First life-settlement portfolio went to another institutional investor, and blew up.
Funny thing: I actually used that feature this past weekend to reverse-engineer when I consumed a particular bottle many months ago. I looked to see when I changed the bottle’s location, knowing that was the date on which I retrieved it from off site, and then was able to pin down the date of a particular event at which I know the bottle was consumed. It is a wonderful little feature. Do you know if that feature exists in the current version of cellartracker? It is possible that Domaine was granted Cellar access on cellartracker. It is also possible that cellartracker was not at all involved, and that Domaine had been made responsible, and had accepted responsibility, for maintaining the accuracy of this particular client’s inventory, and failed to do so, or at least so they claim.
In the modern site, at the bottom of the wine page, you will see text that says: “Report a problem with this page. See my transactions.” The latter link is what you are looking for.