Congratulations on the anagram. You have a simple question to pose directly to Vanquish - is this the same bottle or just the same label on a different bottle !!!
Their terms and conditions allowed for the seller to bid on their own wines… Or perhaps Vanquish bought some of the lots themselves.
Did that lot reach reserve? Would the question also be, did the seller buy it after all the speculation and then ask Vanquish to sell it? Was it Vanquish stock to begin with??
Rod, lot 38 went for £9775 and has serial number 04410…
I expect the bottle offered is one of the seven from lot 37, however they state that the numbers are #611, 618, 620-21, 4408, 4410-11 on those and there is only one photo, of 0620 - you can look it up on spectrum’s website.
Yes Chris, it’s a bit confusing. In the original catalogue, lot 38 was described thus:
“38 Consists of 1 Bottle, 0.75L Estimate: £10,000 (US$15,000, HK$121,000)
Capsule cut and partially removed at base to reveal Domaine, vineyard and vintage
branded cork, very lightly damp stained label, #06428.”
And this was the serial number on the bottle picture they sent us. This does indeed appear part of the photograph of the seven bottles of different sizes on a pink ground that has no lot number on it. In the results pages online, they still say that lot 38 was #06428 and went for £9975 (I got the £8500 figure from a post here on page 11), but the photograph is of bottle #04410 (which was, and still is, part of the six bottle lot 37). The simplest (?!) explanation is that the wrong photograph is attached to Lot 38 in the results document.
Anyway, I posed the relevant questions in an e-mail reply.
And in fairness I should point out that I have just received a phone call from someone at Vanquish in response to say that the posting on Wine Searcher was a ‘mistake’ (now withdrawn), that they had bought the wine(s) but have since returned them to Spectrum to receive a full refund.
I don’t really know what to make of that one way or another, and conjecture seems pointless.
Christophe maintains a very sophisticated inventory (computerized) of older vintages, ie, current back. (I doubt many places do something like that.) In many vintages he showed me, the stock is in magnums. I’m pretty sure he said that he and those before him thought that magnums were the best way to preserve older examples for posterity. Obviously, they are kept unlabeled and labeled as needed-- with labels that say “1.5L”. Not sure on this: but, most domaines by now have machines, like computer printers, that allow great flexibility…no need to have the rolls of various vintages that used to be hanging around every domaine. (The ones I have say that and have nothing special on the capsule.) Not sure whether he or his sister created this system, but it sure must make it easier to participate in events that he wants to participate in. (I know Bettane had done a comparitive tasting of the Hubert/Romain Lignier Clos de la Roche and BM shortly before Christophe showed me his system, and I’d bet that most , if not all, of the Roumier examples were en magnum.)
I am curious about this. I’ve visited huge producers, ones that bottle more in one day than most Burg producers make all year and I’ve never seen anyone who had their own bottle-label making machine. Roll’s of bottle labels are everywhere still. What they do have is box labeling machines to imprint on the outside of cardboard boxes all the unique labeling requirements to ship to different countries. Is this what you’re referring to?
Rod:
While its now a moot point, the first thing I would have said is that it would be extreme foolhardiness to buy the bottle because the cut off capsule flags it as a bottle almost certainly from Mr. Kurniawan. I had also written up that run of 1990’s with Lot numbers in the 30’s (after the auction when we got to the rest of the photos) as wines that had some noticeable discrepancies on the alignments of the dates numbers and in some cases, other defects.
But I’m very intrigued by the statement that Vanquish bought lots of the DRC wines out of the auction and have now returned them to Spectrum for a full refund! It certainly raises some very interesting questions. Do the refunds represent a falling out between the “partners” over Rudy? Isn’t it an implicit admission by Vanquish that the wines they sold (with Spectrum) that were obtained from Mr. Castanos were likely counterfeit? Did they return other wines they purchased in the auction for their retail store? Have Vanquish offered the other auction customers who purchased wines that originated from Mr. Castanos and Mr. Kurniawan their money back?
I took Stuart to be suggesting that they could simply run their pre-printed labels through a laser printer to add the vintage or, possibly, bottle size. That seems possible, but I’m not sure that laser printing is anywhere near as stable is old-fashioned ink, so there may be practical reasons they don’t do this. Not to mention the fact that it would make it harder to detect fake bottles, since the fakers presumably rely on laser printing!
If we are going to benefit from this debacle, it needs to be done from very careful research.
I keep going back to Ponsot’s ridiculous assertion that he believes that 80% of all pre 1980 Burgundy sold at auction are fake.
Indeed many questions, and interesting - perhaps - that I got a phone call rather than a written reply to my e-mail. But I was never going anywhere near to buying it (and my e-mail to them made that fairly clear I think). As I say, further speculation would only be guessing from me, so I won’t.
I think they can print the preprinted labels through a printer and create newer ones…I know of at least two domaines that had such things as of 2007. I’d guess that they are also hooked up to their labeling machines. Of course, as andy points out, in Burgundy there are many aspects of “labels”…neck/vintage pieeces for some; importer strips; back strips, etc. and printed tape for the boxes…
I’ve seen older bottles’ front labels created many ways…including by printer. It can be done with a combo of front label and neck label, too…but…Engel and Roumier…I think…put the vintage on the label itself–without neck labels.
Keep in mind, though, all of them have to deal with various importers’ and government bodies’ regulations and often have to vary things significantly in any given year depending on who’s buying it. I’ve always wondered how the Georges Mugneret estate gets it right, as they have so many smaller importers all over the world vs. Roumier, Rousseau, Rouget, etc.
Just got my April issue of the K and L Wines sales brochure. Page 10 has a column titled "Commitment to Authenticity. Mentions Don by name as blowing the lid off the “much publicized London auction”
The column was authored by Molly Zucker.
Good going guys and gals.
I don’t know if this is the best thread ever but it’s easily the best one I ever read and I’ve been active on the Internet since maybe 1994.
This is interesting, but as a lawyer I want to provide a small clarification: The UCC is not federal law but rather a model standard that has been adopted by most states. This precise issue is likely a state-by-state thing, although there are certainly federal criminal ramifications of all this, as we’ve seen most pointedly in Rudy’s arrest.
