I apologize in advance for the gallows humor, but I can’t resist. Who’s going to organize the first offline of a tasting with bottles fabricated according to Rudy’s recipe book?
That is a marketing opportunity for someone. A Dr. Conti wine recipe book. Labels can be included, indelibly stamped “Copy”, of course.
P Hickner
We would be remiss if we didn’t try!
best make it into a blind tasting against the real things… if real bottles actually exist, that is…
This is funny
I call “Old School Mafia” Maybe Rudy is better off in jail, not talking, and being taken care of by the Feds than he would be talking and getting “taken care of” by somebody else.
Before I try to put together today’s story, I’ll try to answer a few of the questions posed above.
Dar (Darmawan) Saputra lives in Hong Kong. One of the things to keep in mind here is that Rudy frequently used his family member’s names as aliases for his own activity. For example, Rudy both bought wine and sold counterfeit wine operating under the alias Darmawan Saputra. Rudy also used his mother’s name as an alias. In one instance he pretended to introduce a California buyer to an alleged Indonesian collector named Nakasone “Leny” Tan, who not suprisiingly had a hotmail email address registered to Rudy.
As far as “help” goes, as I posted yesterday, we saw physical evidence that the purported Nicolas Cellars neck labels and “decante” labels were produce and sold by a company from Japan Rudy also emailed specific instructions to his brother Dar in Indonesian about creating specific counterfeit wine labels.
Andy:
I don’t see any possiblity of a plea deal at this point. The government I’m sure already tried to get Rudy to cut a deal and give up one or more auction houses in return for a lighter sentence, but that didn’t happen.
UPDATE ON YESTERDAY’s STORY –
As I looked at my notes in court today I realized that one of the topics that arose in the testimony on Wednesday I had failed to cover. Among the piles of labels that we saw on Wednesday were several examples of DRC labels where Rudy had taken an old label off a bottle and had overlaid and glued on to the label printed material which changed bottle numbers, the vintage and in at least one case the signature on the labels. Again these items were unassailable evidence for the jury that Rudy Kurniawan was definitely involved in manufacturing counterfeits. I was particularly reminded of this when Special Agent Schmatz was shown several examples of incomplete counterfeit labels that were shown on Rudy’s computer. (Exhibit 14-3).
NOTE: Too many consecutive nights of very little sleep has caught up with me. As I’ve been trying to compose the story on Thursday’s testimony I’ve been dozing off and making big mistakes. I’ll have to delay a detailed report until tomorrow. We will adjourn at 2 pm tomorrow so I’ll have three more hours then.
In the meantime, I can report that the jury heard from six witnesses on Thursday. Special Agent Schmatz completed his testimony about the processing of the Kurniawan computers into image files and reviewed a few images of incomplete label files from Rudy’s computer. This was followed by testimony of Laurent Ponsot, Christophe Roumier and Aubert de Villaine. All three winemakers testified that the labels they were shown that were seized from Rudy Kurniawan’s residence were not authentic.
The winemakers were followed by Susan Twellman, the assistant to wine collector/restaurateur David Doyle who bought $3.2 million in wine from Rudy Kurniawan much or all of which is believed to be counterfeit, including six bottles of 1945 Romanee Conti and six bottles of various pre-1982 vintatges of Ponsot Clos St. Denis. The final witness of the day was Brian Kalliel, sommelier of Melisse restaurant in Los Angeles, who testified about Mr. Kurniawan’s consistent request that Kalliel provide him with the empty bottles and the corks from the bottles that he brought to Melisse. He also testified with respect to his observations about a number of wines Rudy brought to dinners at Melisse where there were significant authenticity issues.
MORE TO COME…
I have read almost none of this- but the few words I did struck a cord!
There was no testimony given that Rudy emailed instructions to anyone.
There was no testimony about anything other than the fact that there were labels with hand written notes on them on how to make them better.
Don- do not report your own inferences as facts.
MD
We have no idea where those Nicolas labels are from! That’s not evidence. The word japan wasn’t even brought up!
Don- report all you want, but either explain that you are massively editorializing, or stick to the facts presented!
Seriously! I’ve been here the whole time!!
MD
Full Disclosure
TROLL !!
Welcome to the board Chris. 3, 2, 1 …
Chris Anthony, your post makes vague reference to ethical problems and hypocrisy, but offers no facts. How could anyone take your outburst seriously without having the relevant facts to consider? If you have any, you should state them. Meanwhile, I think Don has done a great service which directly or indirectly benefits wine lovers everywhere.
I believe that Kapon, Milstein, Rosania and others have already had many such offlines, Wilfred…
No offense meant to Don and Maureen if this paragraph somehow treats them unfairly, as I do not question the sincerity of their efforts, but in rather delightfully flamboyant rhetoric, Chris makes a point well worth the making. There are abundant “guilty mother f-ers” and “snotty narcisstic [sic] f*cks” permeating this drama. When I think of Rudy’s victims, the old saw, “we’re all guilty of something” does come to mind. Seems to me that there is little chance that Rudy should not have a large handful of co-defendants, enough to populate a telecom “friends and family” program, and little chance that his avaricious and arrogant victims did not deserve exactly what they got. That does not suggest that rudy does not deserve to have the book thrown at him, but on the other hand, I do not see that happening as any vindication for the victims, nor saving the world from wine fraud. It’s a start, but no more than that…
"Whoa whoa whoa - - - I know what you’re thinking - - - Don and Maureen are the good guys here despite their hypocrisy, and you know what - you’re correct, they really are. Unfortunately it’s only because Einstein was right; everything really is relative. In this unfortunately incestual community it seems like every mother f-er is guilty; if not for knowingly making / buying / selling fakes (Kapon, Greenburg, Castanos, Rodenstock, Rosania, RK, Christies, Sotheby’s, Royal, Charlie Trotters) its for being a snotty narcisstic f*ck claiming to be a hero while trying to ignore their own ridiculous hypocrisy.
Sorry for ranting / rambling here on my very first wb post, but why is it we’re all rallying around RK’s trial thinking like a guilty verdict will fix everything?"
You guys are funny.
The shame in all this is that it won’t be taken seriously because a bunch of rich guys are involved.
That somehow makes it less of a crime. Rudy will go to jail but everyone will just say it is a bunch of rich guys that were duped so somehow that is ok.
I don’t really understand that line of thinking.
I know Laurent Ponsot. He has spent a ton of personal money trying to clear the reputation of his family name and wine in the market since he was made aware of the problem several years ago.
I don’t think all the side drama of the hedonism is really the point.
It is about securing the market against fakes. Hardy Rodenstock really got off scott free.
That cost the world of fine wine a lot. This will help.
I appreciate all the information here. Great service.
that’s one way to go about it
It seems to me that the statements of fact that Chris makes that seem to touch a raw nerve are the ones calling Don and Maureen into question. Those are:
- That Don has used Acker to buy or sell wines despite his knowledge of their involvement in the sales of fakes
- That Maureen has used some of the publicity associated with this case to solicit clients
I don’t think Chris needs to provide any more specific evidence of that. The trail is out there for anyone who cares to look. The issue is what to make of that in the overall scheme of things.
I can see the argument that it is hypocritical to support Acker but on balance, it isn’t much of a negative to me. Acker has plenty of business with or without the online community here, and will continue (sadly) to do just fine unless they have charges filed against them. What Don has done far outweighs any support he’s given Acker by sending his business their way. I’d say he’s “given them the business” in more ways than one!
I find nothing at all wrong with Maureen promoting her business and taking advantage of the publicity.
The larger point is the one that Bill comments on: there are undoubtedly plenty of additional guilty parties here, and it is a shame that none of them are being held accountable. At least it doesn’t appear that way so far.
Don, that is not my point at all. If anything, my personal visceral reaction to what Rudy has done has been made stronger by the evidence presented so far, not weaker. I think that, on balance, he deserves the maximum sentence, or close to it, for his decision not to cop a plea and implicate others, and being foolish enough to go to trial with no apparent defense. (Do I know that there are others? No. But there seem to be roadsigns pointing that way all over the place.) The rich guys are another story, and in no way does Rudy get a pass of any sort because his victims are unsympathetic. But the fact remains that his victims ARE unsympathetic, and many of them are at the center of what is wrong with America’s wine culture, and, really, America itself. I am not moaning about rich guys putting the price of wine out of reach for me. I got my wine before the rich guys got here. I am talking about character, personalities, attitudes. I do not like the style of many of the sumbitches that were had, that’s all.
If you and I differ, it is probably in optimism vs. cynicism on what Rudy’s conviction will accomplish. I am all for the highest aspirations, but also a realist looking at the landscape with some distance between me and the issue…
See my list 5496 above.