Did Premier Cru sell a lot of counterfeit bottles? Some articles I’ve read mentions counterfeit bottle, but don’t see anything of substance on the matter.
TBH I don’t think they sold that many. If they had, they would have been able to fill customer orders with the counterfeits. It was a Ponzi scheme.
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No. They didn’t. It was a great store till the last few years when Fox got greedy. I opened a b with a Premier Cru back label just recently. Back in the pre-internet days, I’d rush to the mailbox for their monthly mailer and start ordering. Ahh, the good old days. They still owe me a b of DRC RC by the way . . .
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Monthly? Those colorful missives came at least twice per week. At least I received that many. Although the one time I was in the store, someone else came in and saw several recent ones and complained about not having seen them. I said, “really? I got that one a few days ago and I live in DC.” Whereupon some salesman said oh, yeah, you get them because you buy so much. I was appalled to learn that.
But if you knew Burgundy, there were some great deals.
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+1
Also, I doubt they would have bothered with Dunn (even though that looks like a mag or 3L?) just my 2 cents.
*I opened a mid level 2000 .375 Bdx I got from PC years ago a couple months ago and it was very nice but honestly I had qualms about enjoying it considering the people here who got totally screwed over.
It seems they did everything but that
https://winefraud.com/other-wine-frauds/premier-cru/
There was a bankruptcy auction of empty bottles after the business was shut down, but the counterfeiting would have been done by whoever bought the bottles. PC was primarily a ponzi and the wine was usually good – if people received them.
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It’s a mag. I have a couple of them. I agree that it’s probably not worth the time to counterfeit these, but the sticker did get me interested in the history of the store!
What Alan and Maureen said. They had a lot of good deals, though I don’t think I took advantage of them to the degree the aforementioned did. Near the end, they were out of control and there was some wine I, too, never received. I kept getting mailers during the settlement, but never got any money back. But I figured it was not so bad, given all the money I had saved previously. A lot of people lost a lot, which was a shame, and, also of course, criminal.
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But didn’t Fox say in court he was going to pay everyone back? Hahaha. Sure.
My conclusion is that the business had been sketchy for a long time before the obvious downward spiral. There are enough stories, and I know a few first hand, about problematic orders, particularly ultra high end wines, that go back many years before the bankruptcy. We have some ITB folks here who claim this was going on for one or two decades, or more.
Yeah. Firsthand, I never got most of the 05 Bordeaux futures I ordered from them (him) in 06 and 07. And only after years of complaining did they finally give me store credit for those undelivered futures, and that credit came a good 6-7 years before the bankruptcy.
I got super lucky. I bought a fair amount of stuff from them but was able to get my hands on everything before the bottom fell out. One of the wines I opened recently (I think it was the Chave Hermitage Blanc) had a premier cru label on it. I almost posted a picture of it.